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THE WAY OF THE 
CROSS 



VrDOROSHEVITCH 



WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

BY 

STEPHEN GRAHAM 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

иъс 1Rnic!?erbocf?er press 
1916 



л 6 3? 



Copyright, 1916 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Ube IRnfcberbocfeer ff»res0, IRcw ШогЬ 

MAR 17 1916 

©С!.А428128 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

'T'HE Way of the Cross is probably 
the first piece of Russian war lit- 
erature translated into English. It is 
a terribly poignant impression of the 
fugitives on the road after the great 
German invasion of Russia in August 
and September, 191 5. It is written by 
Doroshevitch, a famous Russian jour- 
nalist, and was contributed to the Russkoe 
Slovo in October, 191 5. Doroshevitch 
went from Moscow to meet the on- 
coming flood of refugees, and he went 
through to the rear of the Russian 
army, and came back with this extra- 
ordinary picture. 

At first he met the sparse stirvivors 
and first comers, those who were furthest 



iv Introductory Note 

ahead in the procession; afterwards 
they came thicker and thicker till they 
were a great moving wall. He tells 
how they camped in the forests, how 
they died by the way, how they put 
up their crosses by the side of the road, 
how they sold their horses and aband- 
oned their carts, how they starved, 
how they suffered. The words speak for 
themselves. 

Doroshevitch is chiefly famous for his 
work on Sakhalin, but he is a very popular 
modern writer, and very powerful, using 
an ironic pen. He writes constantly on 
the Russkoe Slovo, and is a great favourite. 
Russians buy this interesting paper even 
for him alone, and read his articles and 
feuilletons aloud. He has an extraordin- 
ary journalistic style, all short sentences, 
short paragraphs, word-paragraphs, 
dashes, marks of interrogation. Our own 
writers should find him interesting. Scores 



Introductory Note v 

of Russian journalists imitate him and 
endeavoiu- to write in his way — ^not always 
with success. I have been collecting his 
articles for some time with a view to pub- 
lishing a volume of his in our Russian 
Library with Sologub and Kuprin and 
other living Russians. But here is this 
extraordinary document — The Way of 
the Cross. I felt directly I saw it that it 
must be translated and given to the Brit- 
ish public, sent to the trenches, and read 
by all of us, if only that we may realize 
the temper of Russia and what the Rus- 
sians have suffered. 

Doroshevitch is a liberal and a pro- 
gressive, but he is a real Russian and 
a Christian. This breathless, almost 
desperate story yet breathes a tender 
love toward the individual, and there 
is that Christian mysticism that can 
see in the white crosses over the fug- 
itives' graves "Georgian crosses on 



vi Introductory Note 

the breast of the suffering earth." The 
Georgian is the Russian equivalent of 
our Victoria Cross, given for valour and 
self-sacrifice. 

Stephen Graham. 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

THE WAY OF THE CROSS 

I. THE RIVER . 

II. THE CHANNEL 

III. MEETING THE FUGITIVES 

IV. IN THE FOREST . 

V. THE DESOLATION OF ROSLAVL 

VI. IN THE FORESTS OF MOGILEF 

VII. AT THE CROSS-ROADS . 

VIII. BOBRUISK . 

IX. ALONG THE KIEF ROAD 

X. ALONG THE OLD ROAD . 

XI. HELP .... 

XII. HOW THE RIVER FLOWS 

XIII. CONCLUSION 



111 
I 

3 

i6 

31 

58 

70 

112 

131 
136 

139 
145 
148 

155 
158 



The Way of the Cross 

TN 1 8 12 Moscow made a funeral pyre 
for herself, and burned 

— For Russia's sake. 

A hundred years have passed. 

And the red glare of Moscow's fire has 
paled. 

The Moscow of those days! 

A wooden city. 

The burning of it was appalling. 

The ground burned under the feet of 
the Napoleonic soldiers: even the road- 
ways of Moscow were made of wood at 
that time. 

But now! 

More than ten provinces have been 
laid waste by the enemy. 

Millions of people have become beggars. 



2 The Way of the Cross 

And have fled. 

From the places of their birth to the 
far centre of Russia stretches the way of 
the Cross for these people. 

And on this way, as on that other way 
— of Golgotha, are places, there are: 

— Stopping places, 

Where the people faint under the bur- 
den of the Cross. 

Bobruisk. Dovsk. Roslavl. 

These are names full of affliction. 

These stopping places. 

Especially: 

— The memory of Roslavl is terrible. 



THE RIVER 

/^N the roadway, outside Podolsk, a 
^^ sentry, an old man, said to me with 
a smile. 

— All Russia is on parade. 

And he raised the barrier to allow a 
motor-car to pass. 

— One province comes after another. 

After some hours on the road you begin 
to distinguish one province from another. 

There goes the province of Holm. 

You recognize it by the way the peas- 
ant women do their hair. 

They cut a "fringe" and let it show on 
their foreheads, puUing it out from under 
their kerchiefs, 

3 



4 The Way of the Cross 

As our ladies wore their hair twenty 
years ago. 

These are: 

— The White Mountain people. 

The peasant women of the White 
Mountain district, whom the women of 
other provinces cannot tolerate, but de- 
spise them for these same "fringes." 

— The plain-haired women. 

The Holm people came before any of 
the others, they have been longer on the 
road and are more upset than all the rest. 

Their peasant women are quarrelsome, 
they look about them ill-naturedly, and 
for every little nothing they raise hysteri- 
cal cries. 

It's evident that they're upset in the 
very depths of their souls. 

Their nerves are all unstrung. 

See, approaching slowly, in their red- 
dish sheepskin coats with fringes of wool 
hanging from the cuffs of their sleeves, 



The River 5 

come the people from the province of 
Grodno. 

You can recognize the Grodno people 
by their carts. The carts have coverings 
made of checked and striped material 
stretched over a basket-work frame. 

This homespun material is used for the 
festival dresses of the peasant women. 

In the province of Grodno the peasant 
women make such cloth. 

They offer it at sixty copecks an arshin 
at the relief points on the road : 

Even in the extremity of their need 
they will not part with it for less than 
sixty copecks. 

And with this precious material they 
now cover their carts ! 

All goes to ruin! 

This is a twice-humbled people. 

— First of all, good man, there came 
through our province fugitives from other 
places. They ruined us: dug up our 



6 The Way of the Cross 

potatoes, rooted up our cabbages, took 
ой the hay, and carried away the un- 
ground grain in their carts. And as soon 
as this had happened we ourselves had to 
be on the move! — complain the peasants. 

See, here come the peasants of Lublin 
and Lomzha provinces. They wear long 
white sheepskin coats with the wool 
showing at the cuffs of their sleeves, with 
broad shawl-like collars of black sheep- 
skin, and with a beautiful ornamentation 
of coloured threads. They wear four- 
cornered caps with pompons on the 
corners. 

Long moustaches, and shaven chins, 
overgrown and scrubby. 

A quiet, courteous, gentle folk. 

Their women are arrayed in specially 
sumptuous fur coats. 

The sleeves, the pockets, and the 
waists are all adorned with embroidery 
in coloured thread. 



The River 7 

Now all these are dirty, all are covered 
with a thick layer of dust, they are torn 
and ragged, but you can see that they 
were once beautiful, ornamental, and in 
themselves signs of wealth. 

And that not very long ago. 

— It's the third month! 

— We've been journeying nine weeks! 

— Seven weeks since we left! 

The peasants answer weariedly in reply 
to the question: 

— Have you been long on the road? 

A whole eternity! 

— I can't make it out — said one of the 
fugitives to me. He was serving as a 
soldier, and used even such phrases as 
"the masses." 

— I can't make it out : either my home 
was all a dream, or I've gone out of 
my mind now, and God knows when I 
shall understand. My home burnt, cattle 
drowned in the river, no little wife, she 



8 The Way of the Cross 

died on the road; my two children also 
died and we buried them by the wayside 
and put crosses over the graves. I've 
got one son left and one horse. That's 
all we are in the world. Is it possible 
that I am the same man as I was? 

He had the common appearance of a 
fugitive — a two-horse cart with a single 
shaft and canvas tilt. 

When you meet the first party of fugi- 
tives upon the road you think that they're 
gipsies. 

The populations of whole provinces 
have become gipsies, and in the month of 
October are leading a nomad life on the 
road and in the forests. 

It is necessary to form some estimate 
of the greatness of their unexampled trial. 

To a cart that should be drawn by two 
horses one often sees only one. 

The other has fallen, or has been sold 
by the way. 



The River 9 

No harness of any kind, only a horse- 
collar. 

And that lonely horse in the shafts has 
the air of an orphan, and imparts that 
air to the whole conveyance. 

By the side of the horse walks the 
peasant or his wife, turn by turn. 

They only go on foot in the mornings. 

— To get warm. 

In the mornings there are five degrees 
of frost in the fields. 

But they all are travelling in their carts. 

All of them have sore feet and many 
are lame. 

Inside the carts, under feather beds, 
under old clothes and rags, sit or lie five 
or seven human beings. 

The carts are crowded with people. 

The little horses find it hard to draw 
the people and their luggage. 

What is in the carts? 

— We only brought the bedding! 



10 The Way of the Cross 

— We only managed to bring the linen! 
these are the answers you hear. 

You meet the very strangest cartloads. 

They sometimes carry — layers of iron. 

— The roof! 

It was the most valued possession. 

— Their cottage had an iron roof! 

When they were forced to flee, they 
took this most valued thing and carried 
it they knew not whither. 

Why? 

— It was the most valuable. 

At the sides of the carts the peasants 
have slung their kitchen utensils, as 
gipsies do. 

It cuts one to the heart to see these 
remains of what was lately — only yester- 
day — opulence and sufficiency. 

One often sees enamelled ware 

Enamelled kettles, frying-pans, basins. 

Suddenly comes a cart with a watering- 
pot fastened at the side. 



The River n 

Just one watering-pot remains from 
the whole garden and vegetable plot ! 

Sewing machines stick out from the 
sides of the carts. 

It's as if there had been a fire. 

A fire in which all has been destroyed, 
and the people have caught up 

— The most precious things ! 

Often, behind the carts, instead of 
spare wheels as in the majority of cases 
— is tied on a Viennese chair. 

They had been proud of this chair. 

— It had been the chair for guests. 

— They didn't get along anyhow in 
their home. They had Viennese chairs. 
Theirs wasn't an izba. 

And now, when they sleep in the woods 
and travel slowly along the road, in cold 
and hunger, they carry these chairs with 
them as: 

— Their most precious possession. 

Under the cart sometimes dogs are 



12 The Way of the Cross 

tied, and they run along there as they 
can. 

They're tied up so that they won't get 
run over by the rehef cars that come 
swiftly along. 

How moving and how instant in its 
appeal is this enormous and silent pro- 
cession ! How it grips one's heart ! 

The procession moving no one knows 
whither. 

Into the unknown. 

Silently, above all. 

The over-wearied horses do not shy 
when motor-cars pass them. They do 
not even prick up their ears. 

And the dogs don't bark. 

The people in the carts do not talk. 

— They have said all they've got to say. 

They move like grey shadows, like the 
dead. 

The peasant women are silent. 

Even the children do not cry. 



The River 13 

At the relief points, where thousands 
of people are gathered together, you are 
impressed by the silence. 

What a silent country it is ! 

You can go for tens and for hundreds 
of versts — and still meet an almost un- 
interrupted stream of grey carts 

Like a series of spectres. 

And silent, silent, silent. 

Nothing but hopeless boredom and 
grief in their eyes. 

Weary and indifferent faces, as of con- 
victs being marched along the road 

And only by the new white wooden 
crosses along the side of the road can you 
see how much suffering has silently passed 
there. 

A river of suffering has coursed along. 

At the medical stations the doctors 
tear their hair. 

— What can we do? Confess our help- 
lessness? • Numbers come to us suffering 



14 The Way of the Cross 

from rheumatism. From rheumatism in 
its most acute form. What can we do? 
What help can we give these people who 
must spend their nights in the forests? 

There are many cases of typhoid fever 

And at the medical stations on the road 
the doctors give a sigh of relief and exclaim 

— Thank God, no typhus. 

Dysentery is raging. 

— It is astonishing, how many are 
suffering from dysentery! — and that also 
is a matter for despair. 

Nearly everybody has bronchitis. 

Many cases of acute pneumonia. 

Among the children, scarlatina. 

Scores are suffering from bruises and 
blisters, and have their feet bandaged up. 

So blistered, that it's impossible to 
walk. 

Feet scorched from the bonfires near 
which the people have slept at night in 
the forest. 



The River 15 

The doctors work as hard as they can. 

They work with superhuman energy. 

But how can one cope with elemental 
calamity? 

And it is truly elemental. 

What can we do? said a doctor to me. 
Yesterday I had an experience. Side by 
side. A man was dying, a woman gave 
birth to a child. 



II 



THE CHANNEL 



ПРНЕ peasants and peasant women — in 
war time the village is a woman's 
country — come out and look at the on- 
coming fugitives with great curiosity. 

— Not our faces. Not our caps. They're 
not dressed like us, they don't speak 
plainly. 

The peasant women look at them 
closely. 

— Where do they come from? 

Everyone is rapturous concerning: 

— The people from below Riga. 

That is how the peasants designate the 
German colonists from the Baltic pro- 
vinces. 

i6 



The Channel 17 

They came "with the autiimn," while 
it was yet warm. 

They did not hurry themselves. They 
took care of their fine horses. 

They came in large, fine, spacious 
covered carts. 

With all their household goods. 

In the provinces of Moscow, Kaluga, 
Smolensk, Mogilef, and Minsk, all the 
peasants speak of them with envy: 

— You see where these people come 
from. From below Riga. 

They speak with envy of the people 
from Holm province. 

— Especially of those who came first. 

They managed to get away in the warm 
weather. 

When there was something on the road 
for the cattle to eat. 

They drove their herds with them. 

— There was something to look at. 
What fine cows! 



1 8 The Way of the Cross 

The peasants also approve of the Grod- 
no folk. 

— They have fine horses. No com- 
parison with ours. 

The peasant women especially admire 
the people from Lomzha and Lublin, and 
cry out : 

— What fine clothes! They're dressed 
up like butterflies! It's beautiful to look 
at them! 

When one sees them first they create 
a strange impression. 

Suddenly amidst the grey line of fugi- 
tives are seen — bright patches. 

Peasant women come along in bright 
new shawls. 

Ornamental, sumptuous. 

With such tired and mournful faces 
and yet dressed in their festival clothes. 

This is the most dreadful of all. 

These people have come to the very 
last. 



The Channel 19 

'Everything else has been worn out, it 
has all gone to rags, changed to tatters. 

And at the last stopping place the 
peasant woman has taken out of her box 
or from the bottom of some little tub, 
her best clothes which she has hidden 
there till then. 

The very last. 

A ragged fugitive has still something 
left. 

But these well-dressed people have 
nothing more. 

All has gone. 

Soon they'll have nothing more to put 
on. 

The farther you go, the more you meet 
of these 

— Peasants in their best clothes. 

The people of the villages say 

— She's put on her last skirt. Yet you 
can see what sort of people they were. 

And our village folk say, enviously: 



20 The Way of the Cross 

— They've put the horses in by twos. 
How smartly they trot! It's evident 
they've been well fed. Not like ours. 

The villagers are, above all, practical. 

The peasants and their wives have 
bought up the fugitives' cattle. 

Ask the peasant women who guard the 
flocks — the women do this work now: 

— Have you bought any cows from the 
fugitives? 

Every one of them will answer: 

— Why not? There goes one of their 
cows, there's another, there's another. 

They're not willing to talk about the 
price they paid. 

— How much did we give? They were 
dear. Thirty roubles. 

But their neighbours, who have not 
bought cows for themselves, will tell you: 

— It's impossible for her to pay such a 
price! She ought to say outright that 
she practically got them for nothing. 



The Channel 21 

The villages round about make a lot of 
money through the fugitives. 

They do nothing but bake enormous 
quantities of black bread and cart it to 
the relief points. 

At a rouble and a half, at a rouble 
seventy, even at two roubles the pood. 

Unheard-of prices ! 

And there are places through which 
pass 12,000 fugitives a day. 

There is some fear that the villagers 
have given themselves up too much to 
bread making. 

Will they have enough for themselves 
by and by? 

Has the harvest been so good as to 
allow them to feed not only themselves 
but hundreds of thousands of others? 

The towns, villages, and hamlets along 
the road are filled with terror. 

— The fugitives will eat us all up ! 

— They're like locusts. 



22 The Way of the Cross 

Utterly worn out, the fugitives turn 
in from the highway and make their camp 
in the forest at the very edge of the road. 

They stay there for days, for a week, 
upon occasion for two weeks. 

They chop wood and make fires. 

They cut it down, not asking 

— Whose is it? 

They cut wood indiscriminately, con- 
tinuously. 

When they have absolutely made a 
space bare, they move on farther. 

They eat into the forest. 

And behind them they leave the fresh- 
hewn stumps of trees, the bare glade, the 
black traces of the bonfires. 

They trample down everything. 

No grass remains, not a bit of hay, no 
leaves from the trees which they've cut 
down, no branches — the ground is covered 
only with a sort of grey dust, with a litter 
of light rubbish. 



The Channel 23 

All around is a stench from the filth 
they've left behind. 

Sometimes — indeed often — by the side 
of the road they leave a new-made grave 
marked by a white, roughly cut wooden 
cross. 

As you go along the road you can see 
the forest smoking here, there, and in 
every direction. 

These are the bonfires of the fugitives. 

At night the fugitives wander about in 
the neighbourhood. 

They dig up the potatoes, take all the 
cabbages, drag off stacks of corn waiting 
to be ground, and piles of hay. 

At some places where the fugitives 
have been out and foraged, the people 
complain : 

— Lord a' mercy! The oats which 
were being brought to us have fallen into 
the hands of the fugitives on the road. 
So much oats was sent, and we have the 



24 The Way of the Cross 

invoice for it. But only half arrives. 
The fugitives have stopped the wagons on 
the road and taken away what they 
wanted. 

At one of the points on the road I met 
a substantial local farmer. 

He was selling unground oats. 

No dearer than five copecks above the 
price of hay a pood. 

— It doesn't matter how cheap it is, 
cried he in despair. The fugitives rob 
the wagons all the same. 

At another point I was told of a local 
landowner : 

— He goes about with a revolver. The 
fugitives have dug up more than a hun- 
dred acres of potatoes belonging to him. 

There's no stopping people who've 
come to the end of things. 

Near Gomel a by-road goes over a 
ravine, and the fugitives pulled the bridge 
to bits. 



The Channel 25 

For their bonfires. 

In the towns and villages you hear of 
country squires who have fled by night 
with their families from the coming of 
the fugitives. 

You hear of some who have asked for 
a guard of soldiers. 

— If only for the night. Entirely at 
our expense. 

Their fear is quite understandable, when 
at night-time a great crowd overtakes you. 

But no personal assaults of any kind 
have been heard of. 

However, regarding property, no one 
asks : 

— ^Whose? 

You understand that by the carts of 
the fugitives. 

One is full of wood, of fresh wood just 
chopped, and on top of it is tied a great 
bundle of hay, whilst behind hang sheaves 
of rye. 



2б The Way of the Cross 

What do the peasantry think about 
this? 

Along the whole road to Bobruisk, no 
matter where I asked the question: 

— Don't the fugitives do you a lot of 
damage? 

— Nitchevol Nothing, that's all right. 

— Don't they dig up your potatoes, 
and take away your hay? 

— Yes, they take it. How not dig 
them up? 

And for hundreds of versts, just as if it 
were a conspiracy, you will hear these 
phrases : 

— Let them dig them up! 

— They've got to eat, haven't they? 

— Perhaps we shall have to do it our- 
selves ! 

I often heard: 

— They take things in extremity. They 
ask for more, and we make them a present 
of it. 



The Channel 27 

Not once did I hear the word which 
would be used to apply to beggars: 

— Podaem, We grant. 

But: 

— Daem, We give. 

Or, more often: 

— Dareem, We present. 

The peasants, especially the women, 
are distressed by the "unsung corpses,'" 
the dead which the fugitives have to bury 
by the roadside as they go. 

In many places the people have told 
me: 

— ^We said to them, — Give us your 
corpses. We will put them in their 
shrouds, sing the service, and bury them 
as Christians. But they have no time 
to do anything. They dig the grave the 
night before and next morning they go on. 

The channel softly receives the river 
into itself. 

' Without the proper funeral service. 



28 The Way of the Cross 

In the great misfortune that has be- 
fallen these fugitives, the peasantry, by 
their humanity and good-will, have taken 
upon themselves half the burden of the 
calamity. 

The peasants say: 

— The first fugitives really did offend 
us. 

— At first, in a way, they were rude. 

Clearly, we ought specially to increase 
the number of relief stations, 

— To lessen all this. 

Oh, these relief stations beginning to 
be built after the fugitives had already 
arrived ! 

The peasants were really affronted by 
the people of Holm province 

— The Holm people, these are the ones 
who were rude to us. 

This is the general saying 

In Kaluga province, in Mogilef, in 
Smolensk, and in Minsk. 



The Channel 29 

The Holm peasants — are the most 
exasperating people. 

Especially exasperating 

How they talk of their own province! 

— And is your land good? 

— Our land? There's no such land 
anywhere else in the world. Do you 
call your ground land? I shouldn't think 
it worth cultivating. Now ours is land. 
One could eat it — that's the kind of land 
it is. Like bread! 

— Were you well-off? 

— Were we well-off? You people who 
live here couldn't dream what our life 
there was like. 

— Did you have fine cattle? 

— Such cattle I had! And such a 
house I had with a grove round it and 
money spent on it! How our children 
grew up! What cattle perished on the 
way hither, how many we sold for a mere 
nothing ! 



30 The Way of the Cross 

The rumour often went round among 
the Holm peasants that they were to be 
driven 

— To Siberia. 

And they were afraid. 

— Such winter there! Nothing will 
ripen. 

They are angry to have lost 

— Such riches. 

And according to the peasants, it is 
only those from Holm province who have 
been rude to them. 



Ill 

MEETING THE FUGITIVES 

ЛЛСТОВЕЕ loth. 

^^^ Early morning. The fields are cov- 
ered over with hoarfrost which looks like 
the first snow. The smoke stands in 
straight columns over the chimneys. 
There is a slight frost. 

О Lord, remember those who wake this 
morning under the open sky ! 

In the town of Podolsk, near the bridge, 
a white flag with a red cross is flying over 
a two-storey house. 

Opposite it a policeman is standing. 

— What have you got here ? A hospital ? 

— Nothing of the sort. A relief point 

for the fugitives. 

31 



32 The Way of the Cross 

— And have you any fugitives? 

— No, none whatever, none. 

I take a glance inside to see how the 
place has been arranged. 

I meet a very pleasant person in charge, 
a young girl with a kind, simple face, a 
face such as one often sees. 

A face I knew. 

Had I met her before in a village school? 
Or at the time of an epidemic? Or in 
time of famine? 

It's more likely that I never met her 
before. 

But young people with faces like hers 
are seen everywhere where there is need 
of help 

— For the people. 

I shall often meet them now on this 
way of affliction. 

— You haven't any fugitives yet? 

— How haven't we any? We have. 

— You have? 



Meeting the Fugitives 33 

— Sixteen people. 

On the ground floor it's as hot as in a 
bath-house. 

It's difficult to breathe there. 

The fugitives are sitting on iron bed- 
steads covered with grey woollen quilts. 

They look like people from a town. 

They sit there and they don't go out. 

After eight or nine weeks under the 
open sky they don't want to go out of 
this suffocating heat. 

From Podolsk we go to Little Yaro- 
slavets. 

We are borne along in two motor-cars 
belonging to the All Russian Municipal 
Alliance. 

The high-road is quiet and deserted. 

Along it they are carrying only enor- 
mous loads of charcoal for Moscow. 

And here in Lukopin, fifteen versts 
from Podolsk, is the first fugitive. 

He is striding along. 



34 The Way of the Cross 

No one is in the cart. 

It is drawn by a pair of fine, strong, 
well-cared for horses. A good strong cart, 
with a well-made covering. 

The cover is of good American cloth, 
the sort used for table-cloths. Behind 
are fastened some Viennese chairs. 

The man is well and warmly clothed. 
His boots are good. 

No doubt he's some sort of farmer. 

His face is overcast and gloomy. 

He strides like a corporal. How many 
weeks has be been walking? 

Now and then we strike bands of three 
or five wagons following one another, 
and we begin to see the fugitives. 

And all the horses are fine ones, still, 

A strong people. 

The carts have no covers, but are tied 
over with dry uncured bristling calf -skins. 

The skins of calves that have died on 
the road. 



Meeting the Fugitives 35 

And that alone gives to the wagons a 
pitiful and sinister expression. 

They stop at villages, and I cross- 
question them about the state of affairs. 

— Have you any sick? 

— No. We're a healthy set. 

They praise up their horses. 

— How much they've endured! What 
horses they are! 

Along this "Way of the Cross" takes 
place 

— A selection. 

A terrible "natural," selection. 

I am to see this later on. 

All the weak ones perish. 

Both of people and cattle. 

They are tried by sickness, hunger, 
and cold. 

From Baranovitch to Bobruisk, from 
Bobruisk by way of Dovsk to Roslavl, 
and in Roslavl, all the weak ones "re- 
main behind." 



Зб The Way of the Cross 

Men, women, children, and horses. 

These strong people with their strong 
horses — are like a marsh overgrown with 
emerald green grass, behind which is a 
swamp and a quagmire. 

"A strong front" which has, however, 
a dreadful significance. 

How many "sacrificial victims" remain 
behind for only one of these who have 
got through. 

We came through Malo-Yaroslavets 
with its memorials of 1812. 

— Have you any fugitives? 

— A few of them come through. They 
say there are crowds in Medin. 

That is all the sign there is of the great 
"movement of the people." 

All: 

— They say: 

The fugitives do not know whither 
they are going. 

They come along gropingly. 



Meeting the Fugitives zi 

As if in the dark. 

No one along the road knows : 

— What is coming? How many? 
What to expect? For what must they 
be prepared? 

The sun has risen higher and it has 
become quite warm. 

Only the shadows of the trees are 
outlined upon the whitened grass. 
And in the shadow lies the hoar- 
frost. 

God in one thing has had pity upon 
the poor earth. 

He has sent a warm, and best of all, a 
dry, autumn. 

What would it have been like in — mud? 
What will it be like when the rain pours 
down? 

How will the fugitives go on then? 

It's far on in autumn, and such weather! 

The birch woods of fair and sweet 
Kaluga province stand all golden. 



38 The Way of the Cross 

All the colours of gold, from pale yel- 
low to bright crimson. 

The variegated forest alternates with 
evergreen and autumn yellow. 

The villages are preparing for their 
winter sleep. 

Earth has been heaped against the 
walls of the cottages. 

The crevices of the walls of the izba 
have been retrimmed with moss, and the 
roofs with straw. 

Every little cottage looks as if it were 
wrapped up in a new overcoat. 

The village has become a new village. 

The peasant women are just the same 
as ever. 

Judging by all signs, by the cleanliness 
and order of their houses and themselves, 
they've got quite "straight." 
: To-day is Sunday, and they're all ar- 
rayed in their best clothes. 

The peasant women of Kaluga dress 



Meeting the Fugitives 39 

themselves beautifully, and in bright 
colours. 

But there is none of the ordinary 
Sunday excitement. 

You can't smell Sunday in the street. 

They're only dressed in their best, 
because 

— It's the custom. 

Sunday! 

The whole village keeps to the custom. 

And it's dull now in the villages. 

The large village of Ilyinska with its 
statue of Alexander the Second, glimmers 
as we pass. 

In Russia now there are many villages 
with statues of the Tsar- Liberator. 

We come to Medin and stop in the 
market-place. 

— Any fugitives here? 

— Yes, some who've been sent to our 
district. Look, there are some in the 
market. 



40 The Way of the Cross 

They are selling things, and buying 
what is necessary, going everywhere. 

But they arouse no curiosity, nor any 
special interest. No one questions them, 
nor exclaims at their misfortunes. 

It's as if they had lived there for a 
century 

And not arrived yesterday from some 
unknown place. 

There proceeds: 

— Assimilation. 

The country as silently drinks in the 
river as the river comes silently to it. 

See, over there on the right is a whole 
new settlement. 

The little barracks are of newly cut 
wood. 

That's the first relief point on this road. 

A man is standing there in the uniform 
of a provincial watchman. 

— Is it possible to look over the build- 
ings? 



Meeting the Fugitives 41 

— Excuse me, your honour, I don't 
belong to these parts. I'm also one 
of the fugitives. I'm getting a little 
warmth. 

It is one of the relief points of the Muni- 
cipal Alliance. 

A large white linen sign is hanging up. 

— "ReHef Point." ''Tea for fugitives." 
* * В oiled drinking water. ' ' 

There are enormous saucepans for 
stewing beef and making cabbage soup. 

Two peasant women are cutting up the 
beef into small pieces. 

One big shed has many long tables for 
meals. 

There are ten people having a meal 
there. 

A two-storey shed with sleeping shelves 
to accommodate five hundred people, 
where it is not only warm but hot, thanks 
to the enormous iron pipes running the 
whole length of the shed. 



42 The Way of the Cross 

At some little distance is another shed 
— for the sick. 

In the open field "places" are fenced 
round, bearing the notices: 

— ' ' For men. " ' ' For women. ' ' 

Very well arranged. 

Even in front of the shed where hot 
water is given out for tea, a wooden bar- 
rier has been erected, just as in front of a 
theatre box-office. 

— So as to avoid crowding, and that 
the people may keep order and come 
in their turn — explained the provincial 
watchman. 

Afterwards, when we see multitudes of 
refugees using these "points," the remem- 
brance of these details makes us smile. 
! But it is good that even here they've 
begun to do things as they should. 

Later, when the great wave of fugitives 
bursts in upon this place, these warmed 
buildings will save many a life. 



Meeting the Fugitives 43 

In the meantime: 

— ^Are there many fugitives coming 
through? 

— Not a great many. 

But with each ten versts of our onward 
journey we meet the fugitives more and 
more often, and the hnes of them become 
longer and longer. 

There, on the beautiful shore of the 
winding River Izvera, in one of its curves, 
under an acacia, in the clear sweet air a 
little smoke is curling. 

Ten covered carts are encamped there. 

The folk have stopped to cook dinner. 

Near them sits a policeman in a cart. 

I go nearer. 

The policeman is talking to an old 
woman lying on the ground. 
[ — Don't you know that a sick per- 
son mustn't lie on the ground like this? 
You're old, but you must understand that. 

The old woman only moans quietly. 



44 The Way of the Cross 

— Lift her up and put her in the cart. 
She'll have rheumatism in all her joints, 
he explains to me. 

— No, let her lie out in the sunshine. 
Perhaps she'll get warm in the sun — says 
a peasant, speaking for the woman. 

— But isn't she very ill? 

— She's quite broken down. Arms, 
legs, she can't turn her head without 
crying out. 

The old woman only moans. 

— But where can you go with her like 
that? You ought to have asked them to 
take her in at a hospital somewhere. 

— That's impossible. She would be 
left behind and lost. There's a woman 
who has lost her husband, doesn't know 
where he is. 

A middle-aged peasant woman is seated 
on the ground, combing out her long 
hair. 

Her face looks very moumftil. Her 



Meeting the Fugitives 45 

eyes are staring fixedly at some point in 
front of her. 

And she speaks in a quiet monotonous 
voice, with no expression at all in it, — ■ 
it's pitiful to hear her. 

— Yes, my husband is lost. He's 
lost. 

— Where was he lost? How was it? 

— How can we know where? another 
peasant answers for her — ^we don't know 
anything about it. 

— But how did it happen? 

— Her husband went to a relief point 
and got lost in the great crowd. That's 
how it was. We all went on; he got left 
behind. There were two roads. Some 
of us were told to go along one and some 
were sent along the other. We thought 
he'd catch us up. But he must have gone 
along the other road and looked for us 
there. A whole day went by, he didn't 
come. And the next day he didn't come. 



ф The Way of the Cross 

We've never seen him since. And it's 
five days now. 

— My husband's lost, he's lost! re- 
peated the woman monotonously, still 
combing her hair. 

But where did this happen? 

— It was in Yaroslav province, sir. 
That's all we know, that it was in Yaro- 
slav province. But in what village or 
hamlet, or where it was — we don't know. 

— But it couldn't have been in Yaroslav 
province. You haven't come through 
Yaroslav at all. The town of Roslavl, 
yes, but not Yaroslav. 

— That's what I tell them. Roslavl. 
And they're going all over the place, 
seeking Yaroslav province — says the po- 
liceman. 

— Here's a paper that will help you 
on all occasions when you're seeking the 
way. Now, I've written down the correct 
name of the town, Roslavl. 



Meeting the Fugitives 47 

— But where can we look? said the 
peasant. The earth is great, and there 
are many roads upon it, and all the roads 
go in different directions. One man goes 
this way, another that way. It's no good 
looking. 

And all the people around begin to 
discuss the hopelessness of the woman's 
position, just as if she were not there. 

— Perhaps it'll happen that you'll meet 
him somewhere! says the policeman — 
but you can't get any information from 
the police reports, as you could in ordi- 
nary times. The unfortunate thing is 
she doesn't know where she is, and she 
doesn't know where he is. There's no- 
where to send an inquiry form. A formal 
police report would be impossible to 
obtain. 

— It's like being in a desert, says a 
peasant. 

— ^A desert! I like that. All around 



48 The Way of the Cross 

such a mass of people, and you say a 
desert, protests the policeman. 

— For us it is a desert. It's dark all 
around. We can see nothing. It's a 
desert. 

— So she'll be left : neither a widow nor 
a married wife. 

— Perhaps they'll meet, by a miracle. 

— She'll be more likely to have to wait. 
In the next world they'll meet. 

— Here a man is lost like a needle in a 
haystack. 

To be left behind. 

This is the thought which sends them 
all forward, in spite of their weariness 
and failing strength. 

They will not wait at the relief points, 
but go away hungry and dig up a few 
potatoes at night-time somewhere or 
other to appease their hunger. They 
are afraid 

— To be left behind and lost: 



Meeting the Fugitives 49 

They hide their very sick folk in their 
covered carts, fearful lest they should be 
detained at the relief point and : 

— Be left behind. 

They bury their dead at night without 
a service, afraid : 

—To be left behind. 

A simple breaking of a wheel causes 
terror to the fugitive: 

— I shall be left behind ! 

— How can I overtake the others? 

— They will go into the forest. How 
shall we find them in the forest? 

And they go on, go on, go on, without 
rest, when their strength is exhausted, 
sick and dying, as if under the lash of a 
whip, afraid: 

— Of being left behind. 

Here a man can be lost, as a needle in 
a bundle of hay. 

— I've lost my husband, he's lost — 
I can still hear the monotonous expres- 



50 The Way of the Cross 

sionless voice of the peasant woman as I 
leave the encampment. 

The man has been drowned in this 
river of people. 

We come to the second relief point of 
the Municipal Alliance. Farther on we 
shall see them every fifteen or seventeen 
versts. 

Either a relief point of the Munici- 
pal Alliance or of the Northern-Help 
Society. 

Along the whole of the high-road there 
still remain entire, no doubt from the 
times of Nicholas I., old little-used post- 
stations. 

Monumental buildings, built "accord- 
ing to the taste of the wise old times." 

A one-storey house which can well hold 
stores of bread, grain, pork-fat, all kinds 
of country produce, 

A large courtyard to hold forage for 
the fugitives, 



Meeting the Fugitives 51 

The stone apartments of what were 
once warm stables, where sleeping-shelves 
can be put-up — and the rest rooms are 
all prepared to lodge fugitives for the 
night. 

The workmen of the Municipal Alli- 
ance and the Northern-Help have quickly 
and skilfully adapted these buildings. 

In front of this first post-station there 
are already a hundred fugitives. 

We are met by a lady, the manager of 
the relief point. 

— I'm quite a veteran — says she. 

— I was a sister of mercy in the Russo- 
Turkish War. 

She takes us over the place. 

It is in perfect order, a model establish- 
ment. 

There is excellent strong soup, with 
plenty of beef in it. 

— We often read in the newspapers 
about the various horrors connected with 



52 The Way of the Cross 

the fugitives, and we are greatly aston- 
ished. Where do the papers get such 
accounts? There's nothing dreadful here. 
Not so many sick people. Chiefly peas- 
ant women who have given birth to child- 
ren in the forest, in the cold. Yes, that's 
so. But no deaths, no graves by the 
roadside, no horrors. Only where do 
they get such accounts from ? The people 
are quiet. For instance, there are some 
who have stopped in front of me and got 
in my way. I grumble at them a little 
... or rather, I give them a good scold- 
ing, and they very obediently move to 
one side. So where do the papers get 
their picture from? 

An idyll! 

— ^Wait a little, madam, all is yet to 
come. 

The nearer we get to Smolensk province 
the oftener do we meet with fugitives, 
oftener, oftener, oftener. 



Meeting the Fugitives 53 

What we have seen is only the first 
stream of the oncoming flood. 

The waves come one after the other, 
each higher than the other, higher. 

There on the right and left of the road, 
in the forests, under the trees, something 
white is gleaming. 

The affrighted imagination is alert 
and on guard. 

— Crosses? 

Not as yet. 

They are the fresh stumps of hewn 
trees. 

Whole glades have been cut down. 

In the midst of grey ashes are the black 
spots of extinguished camp fires. 

The sun is already setting. It grows 
cold. 

The hewn stumps gleam oftener and 
oftener. 

But if you ask the peasants 

— Don't the fugitives do some damage? 



54 The Way of the Cross 

They all reply 

— Nitchevo. Nothing that matters. 

In Smolensk province they already 
begin to add, 

— At first they did. But now they 
have gendarmes in charge of them. 

The fugitives are now met in large 
parties. Ahead of them goes a gendarme 
on horseback. 

— And that's all right? In charge of 
the gendarmes they do no damage? — I 
ask. 

— Eh, master! — answers the old peas- 
ant whom I am questioning — there's no 
animal that does so much harm when he 
strays to feed, as man! But they are 
quiet when the gendarme leads. 

It is quite evening now. 

Near the station to which we have come 
are already about sixty carts. 

I want to see how food is distributed 
to the people. 



Meeting the Fugitives 55 

But it is impossible to get into the 
house. 

One window is open, and from that 
they give out the bread. 

A crowd of peasant women are stand- 
ing by the house. 

They raise their arms and hold out their 
certificates. 

— How many there are in the family. 

Approaching nearer, I hear a quiet 
murmur. 

Not a cry, not a noise, but a quiet 
monotonous murmur. 

All in one tone, continuously, hurriedly, 
unceasingly, they repeat one and the 
same word 

— Something strange. 

— Me give — me give — ^me give — me 
give. 

Just like a reader in church, repeating 
continuously, forty times in succession: 

— О Lord, have mercy upon us! 



5б The Way of the Cross 

You cannot imagine anything more 
distressing to the nerves than this un- 
interrupted, never-silent, monotonous: 

— Me give — ^me give — me give — me 
give — me give. . . . 

A sister with a white kerchief on her 
head and a crimson face shows herself at 
the window. 

— Yes, we hear. We hear you. We'll 
give you some — she cries despairingly. 

But the crowd continues its sad un- 
ceasing murmur. 

— Me give — ^me give — me give — me 
give — ^me give. . . . 

I learnt afterwards that this "way" 
was invented entirely by the same tur- 
bulent people of Holm province. 

All the others wait in silence. 

The Holm women repeat unweariedly: 

— Me give — me give — me give — me 
give — me give. . . . 

I get into the motor-car and go farther 



Meeting the Fugitives 57 

on, but mingled with the whistling of the 
wind in my ears is always 

— Me give — me give — ^me give — me 
give — me give. . . . 

And for long I cannot get rid of the 
sound. 



IV 

IN THE FOREST 

It is getting colder and colder. 

The golden and rose and flame 
colours of sunset have played themselves 
out on the cloudless pale green sky. 

On the left, over the forest, like a phan- 
tom, is seen the pale fine sickle of the 
new moon. 

From the marsh and from the little 
river over which we pass comes an icy 
breath. 

There are mists in the low-lying places. 

Everywhere it becomes darker and 
darker. 

The moon's sickle is getting all yellow, 

all clear, more and more full of light. 
58 



In the Forest 59 

Stars are scattered about in the sky- 
as on a winter night — so many there are. 

In their light the sky appears darkly, 
darkly, blue. 

And, as if enchanted, the dark black 
forest comes to life. 

On the right, on the left, there, here, 
near at hand, in the depths, through the 
thicket of fine black branches gleams the 
red of large fires. 

Pillars of sparks arise and float above. 

It is as if fireworks were being let off 
in the forest. 

The sweet scent of burning wood is in 
the air. 

The farther we go into the forest the 
stronger is this scent, the oftener do we 
meet the fires. 

And it seems as if we are not in the 
forest at all — but as if a kind of illu- 
minated endless town were stretching 
itself out upon the road. 



6o The Way of the Cross 

We stop the car — ^the forest is full of 
rustlings and noises. 

Human sounds are heard — here and 
there an axe resounds, bonfires crackle. 

I stop for a little and go into the forest. 

I make my way through the branches 
— there is a hewn glade around which the 
thicket stands like a wall. 

A covered cart, a camp-fire; all is 
quiet. 

Nothing is heard save the champing 
of the horses, munching hay. 

Around the fire in silence sits a family. 

The first thing that meets the eye is 
the bare feet of the children almost into 
the fire. 

— Good evening, good people ! 

The appearance of a man at night in 
the forest, coming from no one knows 
where, causes no surprise, no curiosity, 
does not even appear strange. 

They don't even look round. 



In the Forest 6i 

— What's this man come for? 

They answer kindly and civilly: 

— Good evening, sir! 

— What are you doing in the forest? 
Why didn't you stay near the "point"? 

— It's exposed there, sir, it's cold. 
It's warmer in the forest. Look at the 
children. 

— ^Are they very ill? 

—They get wet and cold, and then 
they die. 

— The ground is as cold as iron. And 
they're barefoot. 

The children of the refugees are their 
most precious possession. They grieve 
most of all for the children. But the 
children are almost without clothing. 

The peasant men are warmly clad. 
Almost every one has a warm coat. 

The women are all right. They're 
muffled tip somehow. 

But the children. . . . 



б2 The Way of the Cross 

For the children evidently there had 
been no previous provision. 

At home, children are part of the general 
surroundings — something like dear do- 
mestic animals. And one thinks about 
them as much as one would about a cat. 

— Why should one trouble about a 
child? 

For the children nothing is made. 

And the refugees' children die like flies. 

— They lie with their stomachs to the 
fire, and their backs are as cold as ice. 
They turn their backs to the fire and 
their stomachs freeze. 

And they die. 

And the children sit there in silence, 
sticking out their little red hands and 
dirty bare legs almost into the fire, and 
listen to what is said about them. 

— Inevitable death. 

On the fire some food is being cooked 
in saucepans. 



In the Forest 63 

On the bonfire. 

The saucepans are not made to hang 
over the fire. 

They are the ordinary pots for cooking 
on a stove. 

Not suitable for a nomad Hfe! 

Now we've got to the reason why dys- 
entery is raging. 

In order to cook potatoes, cabbage, 
porridge — they place the pot near the 
fire, tiirning first one side and then the 
other. 

The food cannot get cooked through. 

It is burnt at the sides, in the middle it 
remains raw. 

They eat this mixture of half -burnt, 
half-raw food — and thence arises this 
terrible dysentery. 

The woman picks up what looks like 
a bundle of rags lying near the fire, and 
from it comes suddenly a little whine. 

— I suppose you haven't a little powder 



б4 The Way of the Cross 

with you, sir? The baby is ill. It's 
taken a chill, and is ill. 

— Did you show it to the people at 
the "point"? 

— ^At one place they gave me some 
milk porridge. But it was no good. 
Haven't you any sort of powder for 
children? 

I go on farther, through the thicket. 

Another cut-down space, a little larger. 

Three camp-fires in a row. 

Several families are seated there. 

And again, the sudden appearance of 
an unknown man does not call forth any 
curiosity. 

The people are not interested in any- 
thing. 

It's all the same to them. 

Once more they give the courteous 
reply: 

— Good evening, sir. 

Much as I have gone about among the 



In the Forest 65 

fugitives, amongst those suffering most 
severely, never have I heard anything 
but kind, polite, pitiful words. 

— Father! — an old man sitting crouch- 
ing over the fire squeaked rather than 
said: 

— Father, haven't you any stomach 
drops? The pain's like a knife, father! 

I go on farther. 

A bonfire. Near it lies a man, im- 
movable. 

— What's the matter with him? 

— Rheumatism, sir. 

— But how can you let him lie on the 
ground? I ask, repeating the question 
of the village policeman not long before. 

— ^At the fire, sir, he can warm him- 
self. It's got into his jaws. He can't 
open his mouth. Can't eat, can't talk. 
Oh sir, haven't you something for rheuma- 
tism? 

I go on farther still. 



66 The Way of the Cross 

Again there is a man lying by the fire. 

— ^What's the matter with him? 

— Everything passes through him. 

—Blood? 

—That's it, sir. Blood. 

The peasant lifts his head, and says sad- 
ly in a weak voice, with a deathly sadness, 

— My blood is flowing out of me. It 
flows out. I'm cold inside me. All my 
blood is going out of me. 

And calmly, just as if he were not there, 
the people around say: 

— Yes, that's so, he passes blood. 
He's no strength left — and look at him! 
That's the sort of state he's in. 

And there is a chorus: 

— Oh sir, haven't you any sort of 
medicine with you? ; 

— Sir! Pan! Master! Stop my blood 
from flowing away! 

— Medicine ! Medicine ! Medicine ! 
Haven't you any medicine? 



In the Forest 67 

And there are more and more camp- 
fires in the forest. 

Here a dark strip, then again, as if it 
were a town — then again a dark strip. 

About ten versts from Roslavl there is 
a red glow in the sky. 

—A fire? 

— And a large one. 

The nearer we approach the brighter 
and clearer becomes the glare. 

Only one thing is strange : the glare 
does not waver. It's not like the glare 
of a fire. 

The glare becomes enormous. 

It stands apparently right over the 
town. 

— What is it? Roslavl on fire? 

— ^And there . . . 

What a wonderful picture ! 

We get to within three versts of Roslavl. 

On the right, on the left, wherever you 
look, bonfires, bonfires, bonfires. 



68 The Way of the Cross 

A whole sea of bonfires. 

It is damp. The smoke settles down- 
ward. 

It is impossible to breathe along the 
road for the smoke. 

It stops the breathing, makes the eyes 
smart. 

The lights of the relief cars cannot 
penetrate this thick smoke. 

And all around in the smoke are crim- 
son fires. 

Showers of sparks fly about in the sky. 

This great glare is the necessary out- 
come of all these camp-fires. 

Possibly only in the times of the Tartar 
invasion were there such pictures. 

All around in the forest is the unceasing 
chatter of some gigantic crowd. 

Saws are creaking. As in an Old 
Believers* settlement in the woods when 
people are called to prayer with a wooden 
clapper is the sound of the axes, the axes 



In the Forest 69 

ring soundingly in the night air upon the 
cold trees. 

A sort of continuous forest -clearing. 

And the whole shore of the River Oster 
is spread before us and below us in a 
bright opal smoke with purple spots in it. 

And when we drive over the railway 
bridge, and see below the blue and red 
lights, and hear the whistle of the steam- 
engines, we involuntarily ask: 

— Is this really the twentieth century? 



V 

THE DESOLATION OF ROSLAVL 

OOSLAVL, on the River Oster, is a 
*■ quiet little town in the province of 
Smolensk. Ordinarily, when you drive 
along the highroad coming from the West, 
in Rogachef, in Cherikof, in Propoisk, in 
Krichef , they will tell you that Roslavl is : 

— The first Russian town. 

From here to the eastward. Great 
Russia begins. 

When you arrive at Roslavl you will be 

awakened in the morning by the soft 

yet powerful baritone of its marvellous 

bell, sounding from the height of the 

Transfiguration monastery on the hill. 

And you will hear this, like music — 
70 



The Desolation of Roslavl 71 

for the first time on the whole of your 
journey from the West up till then. 

A gracious little town. 

Here everything has some sort of 

— ^A name. 

Not only orphanages and trade-schools 
bear the name of some one, of some local 
citizen, 

But even the trading banks — and such 
like places, 

— Bear some name or other. 

A remarkably gracious little town. 

Now Roslavl is choked and drowned. 

There is neither sugar nor salt in the 
town. 

In the streets fugitives stop you and 
ask, 

— Friend, where can I buy any salt 
here ? I ' ve been trying to get some all day. 

— Little father, where can we get any 
sugar? Even if it's only half a pound or 
a quarter of a pound. 



72 The Way of the Cross 

You go into a baker's shop and ask: 

— Have you any white bread? 

The shopman looks at you in wonder. 

— We bake no white. Only black, 
and even that's all taken for the fugitives. 

— The fugitives will eat us up, says 
Roslavl in terror. 

But the wave of fugitives comes on 
and on, and a stench is given forth from it. 

Here the great river stops, and its 
waters turn round and round, like a 
whirlpool. 

Roslavl is overwhelmed; the tide rises 
above its head. 

The reason? 

— The railway. 

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds 
of thousands of people will remember 
with horror: 

— The desolation of Roslavl. 

Here is enacted a dreadful scene, 

"The completion of the process." 



The Desolation of Roslavl 73 

— The fugitives giving up their horses. 

First they were as "gipsies," but now 
they have turned into a Khitrof market.^ 

Numbers of the fugitives, the great 
majority of them, having exhausted their 
last strength and reached the railway: 

— Have the last thing to do as peas- 
ants. 

They sell their horses. 

And thence go onward 

— In the train. 

Waiting in an open-air camp in Roslavl 
for a week or so, until 

— They are given places. 

And with what desperation do they 
cling to the possession of their horses. 

Here I made the acquaintance of a 
fugitive. 

— ^A bitter man. 



' A notorious district in Moscow, where beggars, tramps, 
and thieves congregate, and where there are many doss- 
houses. 



74 The Way of the Cross 

His wife died two weeks before the final 
ruin and he has three children, two very- 
young, and a baby. 

He had owned some land and was a 
farmer. 

— He had paid 12,000 roubles for it. 

The payment had been spread over 
seven years and all had been paid. 

— He had only just begun to make a 
living. 

And now "this had happened." 

He had managed to bring away all his 
cattle. And four horses. 

He had gone a long way. 

But in Minsk province, where a con- 
tinuous marsh extends for tens and tens 
of versts, an order had come to clear the 
high-road, and the cattle had been driven 
on to the marsh. 

— My little son — said he, who had 
gone on in front with the cattle, ran back 
to meet me at a turn of the road, crying, 



The Desolation of Roslavl 75 

" Daddy, Dadd}^, the cattle are all drowned 
in the marsh." I ran to him. The herd 
of cattle were twisting and writhing in 
the bog. Bellowing. And among them 
I saw mine. 

He spoke sadly but calmly about the 
death of his wife, about his land that had 
''cost so much money." But 

— I'd rather have been blinded than 
see such a sight. A second ruin. All 
my property perishing in the quagmire, 
and I stand on the road and become a 
beggar. 

Three horses died on the way. 

One remained. A little shaggy horse, 
ten years old, but active. 

In Roslavl he found a kind man who 
permitted him to live in his banya, bath- 
house. 

A black banya. 

— But that was a palace! 

Day and night I never cease to pray to 



7б The Way of the Cross 

God for the kind man who saved my 
children, — says he. 

He has found a footing at Roslavl and 
will remain there. Drives a cab. 

— Two roubles a day shall I earn, think 
I. One and a half will feed the horse, 
and the fifty copecks which remain must 
suffice for us four. 

— Not a large budget. And what if 
you were to sell the horse and go farther? 

He looked at me straight in the eyes 
with terror. 

— Master! said he, I have a horse, and 
so all the same I remain a man ! A human 
being! But without a horse, what sort 
of a being should I be? What should I 
be? 

On all sides you hear: 

— ^Well, at least we have a horse! So 
we can still count ourselves human beings! 
Still peasants! 

— And if the money be all spent, and 



The Desolation of Roslavl ^^ 

the peasant cease to be a peasant. What 
then? 

The last thing that connects him with 
the past, the last thing that binds him to 
life. 

Along the main street of Roslavl from 
earliest morning till the darkness of night 
without interruption, without ceasing, 
go two processions, one one way, the 
other the other. 

On one side of the road come an endless 
series of grey carts, one after another 
endlessly — and pass away towards that 
stretch of the road where yesterday we 
saw innumerable camp bonfires. 

On the other side coming from that 
place come refugees on horseback, some 
astride, some sitting sideways, on little 
worn-out horses. They go to the bazaar. 

Betwixt the two processions is the long 
empty alley of the middle of the street. 

On both sides there is silence 



78 The Way of the Cross 

As if funeral processions going in oppo- 
site directions were meeting one another. 

Not even looking at one another, in 
fact, as if they did not remark one an- 
other. 

To the town: 

— To seek salt? 

To know: 

— What further orders have been 
given? Whither should they go now? 

No, no, they are carrying coffins 
through, 

Mostly children's. 

A peasant is carrying a coffin on his 
shoulder. Silently after him and with- 
out weeping strides his peasant wife. 
Clinging to her skirts also silently and 
without weeping come frozen barefooted 
children. 

Look, here comes a large coffin. 

From the hardly shut lid hang new 
and bright coloured cottons. 



The Desolation of Roslavl 79 

It is a girl that has died. 

Four girls are carrying the coffin. 

They will bury her in the right way, 
with the ritual. 

In the proper place. 

The little procession went past, simple, 
beautiful, melancholy. 

No one stopped to look round, to turn 
the head. 

No one meeting the procession crossed 
himself, nor drew off his hat, nor gave 
any attention. 

As if the people had ceased to see with 
their eyes. 

And there stretches, stretches, along 
the footways, along the margin of the 
road, without respite, without interval, 
without interruption, the two processions 
ever coming towards one another and 
passing. 

Grey carts, carts, carts. Horses, horses, 
horses, fugitives wandering like shad- 



8o The Way of the Cross 

ows, horses, children's coffins, and again 
horses, horses, horses. 

The head turns giddy looking at the 
endless movement. 

It becomes difficult to breathe because 
of that which passes before the eyes. 

And strange. 

In this little town through which comes 
such an ocean of people, it is as quiet: 

As if it were all one great funeral. 

I had hardly come into the market- 
place before the crowd swirled round 
me with quick movements and feverish 
eyes. 

Whence had they come to Roslavl? 
Whence had so many come? 

There were all dialects. 

Great Russian, Russian with Little 
Russian accent, with Polish accent. 

— Panitch ! Do you want horses? 
You can buy them very reasonably. Ah, 
so reasonably! A horse that cost a 



The Desolation of Roslavl 8i 

hundred roubles, you can buy for twenty- 
five. Do you wish to buy? 

— Wait for me, wait for me. I'll take 
you to the horses. 

— Mr. Squire, Mr. Squire, here are 
horses. Farm horses! And cheap! 
Cheap ! I'll bring them to you. 

There's no getting through the horses 
in the market — no possibility of penetrat- 
ing through. 

There stands one great solid crowd. 

Quick people even slip about under 
the horses. 

What the prices are you may judge 
from separate exclamations. 

— If there's such a bargain anywhere 
else on God's earth I'd like to hear of it! 
says a fugitive, turning over and turning 
over again the dirty notes which he has 
received. 

— Don't get rid of them here. Better 
sell their skins in Kalutsk. 



82 The Way of the Cross 

— Take the twelve roubles now. Take 
them now. To-morrow you'll be glad 
to sell at ten. 

— By to-morrow she'll drop down dead 
if you go on ! 

— What! Fifteen roubles not good 
money? Did you say that? You? 

— Ten roubles as they stand! From 
hand to hand! says a tall, dark peasant 
with a long beard, standing beside a cart 
to which are tied six horses, all skin and 
bone. 

He says in a contemptuous tone: 

— You see the horses. A red note for 
each. Altogether. Take them. It will 
mean money. Without money there's 
no doing anything. 

I say to a fugitive: 

— Don't you know that in Muchin 
yard, beyond the town, they're buying 
for the Government. There you would 
get a fairer price. 



The Desolation of Roslavl 83 

The fugitive does not succeed in an- 
swering for himself. 

Once more the crowd of people with 
quick movements and feverish eyes. 

— The Government? There, you'll 
never get a turn ! 

— It's necessary to stand three days. 

He's got to hurry for the train. See 
what a lot of people are coming in. 

— He will be late, and have to wait a 
month in the open. The autumn rains 
will start. 

— And cold. All his children will 
freeze. 

— From Bobruisk another five hundred 
thousand are coming. 

— Who are you, Mister? Are you 
someone from the Government or a Relief 
Committee? 

— Our Httle children are just freezing 
to death, says another fugitive. 

And at this market where horses and 



84 The Way of the Cross 

people are crushed in one compact mass 
where from the heat of bodies and the 
smell of horses it is difficult to breathe, 
if any one is cheerful, it is only the pur- 
chaser. 

The fugitives have not much to say 
for themselves, and that in a low voice. 

As if stunned. 

They sell their horses and stand as if 
in perplexity. 

They go away — horseless, peasants no 
longer, wordless. 

In appearance so calm and indifferent: 

As if nothing had happened. 

No expression of the grief, of the deadly 
melancholy which is in the soul. 

A silent land. 

In the same street as the market-place, 
by the Petrograd Hotel, from dawn until 
late evening, the crowd is like stone. 

There's no getting through. 

The hotel is occupied by the Committee : 



The Desolation of Roslavl 85 

—Of "Northern-Help." 

Here it is arranged for the fugitives: 

— Where each has to go. 

I attempt to pass through the crowd 
and get as far as the gateway. 

Farther is impossible. 

The stench is such that the head simply 
goes round. 

May God give strength to the ReHef 
delegates working in this stench — to 
remain healthy! 

— ^We've been waiting for days! — com- 
plain the fugitives, — and stand without a 
bite of food from morning. 

—What's a day! You stand a day 
and at the end of it go away. To-morrow 
you come again and have had nothing to 
eat. 

I cast a glance at the Town Hall. 
where is a crowd of peasant women. In 
a corner is a table. With the notice : 

— ' ' Employment Bureau. ' ' 



86 The Way of the Cross 

A stout lady sitting there says to a 
peasant woman standing with a child in 
her arms: 

— With us, my dear, the conditions of 
employment for servants are usually . . . 

Tiny Roslavl. How is it possible to 
find employment here for tens of thou- 
sands of people ! 

The peasant women stand in the wait- 
ing rooms. They stand patiently, they 
stand all day. 

And having obtained nothing whatever, 
go away. 

In the street you are stopped by people, 
saying: 

— Are you not in need of workmen in 
your village? 

— ^Are you not hiring people? 

And all in such melancholy, hopeless, 
gentle voices. 

I drive back to the place where last night 
I saw a horde of nomads — an actual horde. 



The Desolation of Roslavl 87 

From the high bank of the Oster, on 
that side from which the forest has been 
cleared, you see for versts and versts a 
cloud of bluish, half-transparent smoke. 

That's the evening camping ground. 

I walk farther and farther into the 
forest over the soft wilted grass. 

Everywhere are glades, everywhere 
people, huts of pine-branches, and from 
all sides is heard the sound of axes. 

How many thousands of people are 
there here! 

People tell you various enormous num- 
bers. 

Give it up. 

How calculate: 

— How many drops of water are there 
in the river? 

What a terrible smoke in the forest! 
Because of the smoke the eyes of all are 
red and painful. 

— It is damp at night, the smoke settles 



88 The Way of the Cross 

down, and there's no getting out of the 
wood — says a small farmer to me, — but 
it's warm in the smoke. Just like sitting 
in a dark izba. Hot, even. We warm the 
forest. That's what it's come to for us. 

— Perhaps it's just the smoke that 
saves us, says his neighbour also a farmer 
— everyone is coughing all around, some 
are spitting blood, but in the smoke 
every microbe perishes. 

Going farther into the forest I come 
upon a crowd. 

A priest is explaining to them how and 
where to go that their horses may be 
properly inspected and priced, how to go 
to Muchin yard, sell their horses, and 
receive the money; how to go to the rail- 
way station and wait their turn for a seat 
in the train, how much will be given to 
each man for food. 

All circumstantially. 

— ^And I will drive ahead and meet you 



The Desolation of Roslavl 89 

at such and such a station. That's so 
many versts away. 

This is a priest from the province of 
Holm, and he is explaining to his flock. 

Many of the priests of Holm province 
accompany their refugees. 

And the help which they give is colossal. 

They get some sort of understanding 
of the situation for themselves and explain 
everything to their people. 

It is asked: 

— Where are the numberless local offi- 
cials, the people looking after the village 
in time of peace, where are they now in 
the time of terror and calamity, where 
have they betaken themselves — where, 
saving themselves, do they receive their 
former official salary? 

How have they abandoned this illiter- 
ate people who do not even understand 
the Russian language well, in such a 
moment. 



90 The Way of the Cross 

They looked after them all the time 
like children, and then, in the difficult 
moment, abandoned the children to the 
will of Fate! 

Had they come with their own refugees, 
had even the least important of them 
come, there would have been someone to 
whom to turn for information, to find 
out things. 

But abandoned, left entirely to them- 
selves, the fugitives grope about, and 
feel their way like people with bandaged 
eyes. 

Not knowing even: 

— Whither to go. 

A man sells his horse, deprives himself 
of his last possession, takes the last step, 
and 

— ^Whither away? 

— Whither to go? Whither is he sup- 
posed to go? 

He waves his arms helplessly. 



The Desolation of Roslavl 91 

— I do not know. 

— Where can I find out? 

— I do not know. 

He knows only that: 

— It is on the train that he is to go. 

I made acquaintance with a priest. 

He spoke bitterly. There was des- 
peration in his voice. 

— We try to preserve ourselves to- 
gether. But we are assigned to places! 
Assigned! One part of the flock to 
Riazan, another to Kazan, a third to 
Orenburg ! 

Here in the wood are fugitives at the 
last limit of their strength, making a 
decision : 

— To deprive themselves of the last 
thing. 

To sell their horses. 

They sell them in the market-place, 
in Muchin yard, to ''Northern-Help," 
to the Government, fkaznu, as they say. 



92 The Way of the Cross 

Then they are already "not muzhiks"; 
they wander over from this camp to the 
camp near the railway station. ^ 

And whilst they are encamped in the 
wood they go backwards and forwards 
between the relief points of "Northern- 
Help" and the Municipal Alliance. 

I ask the fugitives about the relief 
points. 

Some answer: 

— Those that can help are half-hearted. 
They can't do much. There is a mass of 
people, and always more coming, and 
more coming. 

The majority gesticulate impatiently: 

— What use are the points? They 
offend everybody. 

— Those who happen to be near the 
relief points profit by them. But we 
stand far away. 

— It's necessary to take your stand at 
one o'clock in the night, and wait your 



The Desolation of Roslavl 93 

turn till at midday you receive a bit of 
bread. You get your death of cold and 
then they give you a little to eat. 

— ^Ah, master, you need strength there, 
strength. Who is stronger, he receives. 

— By force. 

— Crushing other people, and not let- 
ting them get anything for themselves. 

— By sheer force a strong man can get 
more than he needs. The weak man is 
crushed and bruised. And he freezes. 

At the relief points every one is making 
superhuman exertions. 

But how get even with this elemental 
onrush? 

— Salt a river! Is that possible? — 
said someone to me in despair, at one of 
these points on the road. The relief 
stations and barracks of "Northern-Help" 
and Municipal Alliance stand on the 
high-road facing each other. 

A whole settlement. 



94 The Way of the Cross 

Around them is a camp with carts — 
the aristocrats of misfortune. 

— Fortunate ones: 

Who have succeeded in obtaining for 
themselves places at the actual doors of 
the relief points. 

It is colder than in the forest, but more 
satisfying. 

On the great highway 

— ^A promenade — as one of the numer- 
ous gendarmes keeping order put it. 

Not only is it difficult to drive through, 
but difficult to walk through. 

The people flock first one way, then 
the other, with downcast visage, to the for- 
est, from the forest, from one side of the 
highway to the other side of the highway. 

At the bonfires they warm their red 
and chilblained hands. 

Horses pass through the crowd. 

With triangular brandings on their 
hind legs. 



The Desolation of Roslavl 95 

These are the horses bought by the 
Society of Northern-Help. 

Everywhere there are notices to the 
effect that: 

— It is not . permitted to sell or to buy 
branded horses under pain of a heavy 
penalty. 

These purchased horses are given out 
to neighbouring landowners and farmers 
at a charge of fifteen copecks per day : 

— To graze. 

Whatever is there for them to graze 
on in late autumn? 

Many horses wander about lost. 

They come to the high-road, to the 
people, to the other horses. 

They wander about quietly, somehow 
helplessly, looking around them with 
their wise, sad eyes. 

As if they were seeking their own 
people. 

Horses at the last gasp of their strength. 



ф The Way of the Cross 

But no one pays any attention to them. 

Neither do the horses pay attention. 

They stumble upon people. 

In the peasant huts occupied as relief 
points bread is taken in at the back door, 
cut up there, and handed out from a little 
window in the front. 

So from morning to night bread flows 
in an uninterrupted stream. 

Sentries keep the order of those who 
are waiting for bread. 

In front of the bread windows range 
endless ranks of fugitives. 

Thousands and thousands of people. 

One person moves an inch, another 
person moves an inch, and from the midst 
is heard wails. 

• — You're suffocating me! Oh, suffo- 
cating. 

People fall unconscious. 

Here indeed only the stronger can 
stand the strain. 



The Desolation of Roslavl 97 

The hungry crush the hungry in order 
that they may squeeze into a better place 
in the line and receive their bit of bread 
sooner. 

The women, the children, with wide 
staring eyes, with deathly pale faces. 

Quietly and silently the fierce and cruel 
struggle goes on. 

All around the people swarm like 
flies. 

A man in a uniform has only to appear, 
or even a gentleman in civil attire, and 
the fugitives swarm about him. 

— Your high nobiHty! Show us your 
official mercy! 

Where have I heard this melancholy, 
hopeless tone, these very words of hu- 
miliation? 

Somewhere I have heard . . . 

Something familiar . . . 

— What is it you want? 

— Give us a certificate' 



98 The Way of the Cross 

Food is only given out to those who 
ha,ve certificates: 

— According to the number of souls 
in the family. 

Such certificates ought to have been 
obtained from the village authorities at 
the point from which they started. 

— They did not give us them ! We had 
not time to get them. 

—Lost! 

— We shall die of hunger. 

— Your high nobility ! 

They come for everything, they come 
to make complaints. 

— Your high nobility! Permit me to 
explain. The starosta advised me to wait 
for the Germans and not go away. I did 
not agree. He got angry and refused to 
give me a certificate. Decide for your- 
self! Show God's mercy, and give me 
one now. 

The crowd surrounded another man, 



The Desolation of Roslavl 99 

some sort of engineer in charge of the 
building of the barracks. 

— Your high nobihty ! 

—I give no certificates whatever. They 
are not for me to give. Do you under- 
stand? I haven't got the right to give 
them. I am building barracks. 

— How haven't you the right? 

That means we've got to die, I suppose? 

— No one has the right. No one will 
give a certificate. 

— How haven't you the right? You 
have authority. 

— An engineer! I am an engineer! 

— It's all the same. Give us a cer- 
tificate. 

— ^A certificate. 

— Your high nobility. 

The engineer jumped into his car. 

But the motor-car could hardly move 
in the crowd at a walking pace, hardly, 
hardly. 



100 The Way of the Cross 

Following the car went the people, 
crying out in melancholy, monotonous, 
hopeless tones: 

— Your high nobility! Show official 
kindness. 

And suddenly I remembered: 

— Where I had heard these very 
voices. 

That very tone. 

Sakhalin. The convicts having come: 

— For their portion. 

Oh God, were not these people until 
yesterday peasants with horses ! 

A dreadful place: 

— Is Muchin yard. 

Where the fugitive ceases to be: 

— A peasant. 

At ordinary times I suppose this yard 
is simply a large inn. 

On the town side of the River Oster, 
on the heights. 

Down below, under the cliff, is an im- 



The Desolation of Roslavl loi 

mense marshy meadow, and there, what 
a wild, what a strange picture . . . 

At that point I thought of the late 
V. V. Verestchagin. 

Only he with his grey tones could have 
painted the grey horror of this life, only 
he could have painted the dreadful picture 
in all its horror. 

For several acres the whole meadow 
was covered with abandoned and broken 
carts. 

The iron^parts had been unloosed and 
taken away, wheels lay separately, tilts 
separately. 

How many were there there? 

Tens of thousands. 

The whole plain was grey with carts, 
with wheels, with shafts and single shafts. 

Having sold their horses for cash, the 
fugitives abandoned their carts here, only 
taking with them the iron parts they 
could unfasten. 



102 The Way of the Cross 

Among this grey wilderness of ruin 
fugitives were wandering. 

These were people who preserved their 
horses and could still go on: 

— In their own carts. 

They sought here any bits of harness 
or shafts or wheels that could serve them 
better than their own. 

From various separate parts they put 
together whole carts. 

Some of the branded horses had come 
here. 

Seeking perhaps, by scent or by instinct, 
the carts to which they had once been 
harnessed. 

They wandered and stumbled. 

Like shadows. 

Hardly keeping their feet.- 

They fell. 

There lies one. He breathes heavily, 
suddenly quivers tremulously. 

In his round glassy eyes there is suffering. 



The Desolation of Roslavl 103 

He tries to raise his head from the 
ground. 

He has not strength to hold it up, and 
lets it fall again. 

Then suddenly he begins to wail, just 
like a man. 

A little farther off lies a horse already 
stiff, and its long, long, lean legs stretch 
out. 

In front of Muchin yard there is a 
crowd. 

There's no making one's way through 
the carts. 

And — a detail . . . 

The horses are theirs no longer. They 
have been inspected, the price has been 
fixed, and the peasants await their money. 

But to-day is cold and overcast, and all 
the horses are in some way sheltered from 
the cold. 

The last service to "their" horses. 

The last little care. 



I04 The Way of the Cross 

In all this there is a gentle and silent 
farewell. 

The great yard is full. The solid mass 
of horses is almost motionless. There 
are a few cows. 

You can tell by the melancholy expres- 
sion of the horses, and their difficulty in 
moving, how exhausted they are. 

You cannot get into the office where the 
money is being paid. 

"Muchin yard" — that's where every- 
thing is done. 

It is the place where they sell cat- 
tle, and a labour exchange and what 
not. 

In the crowd of farmers and salesmen: 

Workmen are hired. 

— ^A cottage for two families costs thirty 
roubles. 

— What, thirty roubles altogether? 

By the tone of this sincere and deep 
astonishment (not vexation, but simply 



The Desolation of Roslavl 105 

unheard-of wonderment) you see what 
sort of prices are determined here. 

— Each member of the family can work 
for his living separately. 

— What do you mean by each member 
of the family earning separately? 

— If you don't want to, you needn't. 

And here, as in the market-place, dis- 
cussions are short. 

In Muchin yard, as everywhere, there 
are gendarmes, soldiers. 

But they've nothing to do. 

All is quiet. 

As at a funeral. 

At last, the final stage. 

The whole way to the station are rail- 
way buildings, naphtha warehouses, and 
the open ground along the Briansk road is 
one continuous camping-ground of fugi- 
tives. 

There are two trains a week. 

One party has hardly been sent off 



io6 The Way of the Cross 

when from Muchin yard comes out three 
times the number of these ''horseless 
ones." 

The crowd does not melt away but 
increases. 

Here it is cold, here there is no forest. 

And the fugitives press together closely, 
family to family. 

Only warming themselves in the smoke 
of their bonfires. 

There are bonfires day and night. 

Wandering women go from house to 
house in the neighbourhood. 

They stop outside the doors, crying: 

— Give, for Christ's sake, give us 
wood. 

And, the heart anguished, they give. 

— More still is stolen! 

Here there is not : 

— Giving, 

As in the village. 

But the people say straight out: 



The Desolation of Roslavl 107 

— We do give. We do more even than 
we can. 

Irritated by fear for themselves, fright- 
ened at these "unheard-of people," the 
little towns and hamlets and the "all- 
understanding" villages. . . . 

Can only express their astonishment 
at the celerity with which man adapts 
himself to circumstances. 

Where and when have these peasants 
of yesterday learnt so quickly to build 
dens and dwelling-places from any sort 
of rubbish? 

It's as if they were born nomads. 

It simply makes one wonder. 

— Out of what was all this put together? 
How does it hold? 

Some slates stolen from one place, 
a paling broken somewhere else, an 
armful of hay, rags brought in by 
the children — and behold, a dwelling- 
place. 



io8 The Way of the Cross 

And Lord, how to thank Thee that 
there is no longer any rain! 

They freeze, get ill, watch their child- 
ren die, and wait. 

It's not possible to breathe. 

All around is human filth. 

In certain stinking horrible ponds, the 
peasant women with feet blue from the 
cold, are washing clothes. 

And these ponds also are tainted with 
filth. 

— Even here it's good to wash the 
linen. 

— For we have been fairly eaten up ! 

And when I come here in the morning, 
whilst the ground all around is covered 
with hoar-frost and the half -expired bon- 
fires glimmer beside the marsh on which 
the camp is set, the spectacle is dreadful. 

How reckon up the sufferings? 

It's no use even thinking of going 
across the station platform. 



The Desolation of Roslavl 109 

For passage there is only the merest 
margin above the rails where one might 
go along as on a tight-rope, and sideways. 

The whole platform is occupied : 

— By the fortunate ones. 

By those who have gone through all 
the trials of the way of affliction, lost 
their horses, frozen in open camping- 
grounds for weeks whilst they waited; 
by the people who have at last obtained: 

— Their turn. 

And they will travel, no one knows 
where, no one knows to what end. 

On immense bundles, on top of mount- 
ains of household furniture, lie people, 
lie or sit, and you can see that no force 
could prevail on them to abandon their 
positions. 

When the bell rings, indicating the 
arrival of a goods train, wild scenes are 
enacted. 

In the cattle-trucks it will at once be- 



no The Way of the Cross 

come warm, because of the many people, 
and the fugitives rush to take the train 
by storm, crushing one another as they 
push forward. 

And they lug along their bundles. 

And how much of the strangest, most 
unnecessary rubbish do they pull along 
with them into the trucks, and heap up 
in the places which might otherwise be 
occupied by extra people! 

Rubbish for us — but the last posses- 
sions for them. 

That is all that remains. 

I return to the town. 

In endless series, meeting one another 
and passing on, go the two processions 
up and down the street. 

They come, they come, they come, 
without respite, without interruption, 
the grey carts. 

They are all like one. One like another. 
And on the other side of the road come 



The Desolation of Roslavl iii 

the fugitives on horseback, the fugitives 
on horseback, to sell their horses. 

And in this whirlpool of the river of 
human grief, little and dreadful Roslavl 
has choked and drowned. 

Such was the coming of the fugitives 
into Great Russia. 



VI 

IN THE FORESTS OF MOGILEF 

/^N the road from Roslavl to Bobruisk 
^■^^ there passes before us the great 
movement of the people in all its grandeur. 

— Where are you going now? — they 
asked me in Roslavl. 

— To the province of Mogilef . 

— And, to Poland. 

So in ordinary parlance, do they call 
the province of Mogilef, the extremest, 
foremost point of Great Russia. 

Day by day the mornings become 
frostier. 

There is thin ice on the marsh. 

The province of Mogilef is this: 

— Sand, on which the forest has grown. 



In the Forests of Mogilef 113 

In the wind there are drifts of Mogilef 
sand upon the road. 

From ahead there comes forward on the 
road whole clouds, whole white clouds. 

Dust. 

The grey carts go no longer in single 
file. 

They have occupied the highway in its 
whole width. 

They come on like a wall. 

The aching eyes of the horses, the 
aching eyes of the people, equally full 
of physical suffering and full of affliction, 
rend the heart. 

Over the branches of the trees, whither 
a glance of the eyes will not take you, 
rise the many smokes. 

Now it is continuous. 

The whole forest is inhabited. 

Through the dust the whole atmosphere 
is yet penetrated with a sweet odour of 
hot pine branches. 



114 The Way of the Cross 

And that scent we shall breathe the 
whole way without ceasing. 

Two hundred and fifty versts of smoke. 

And no limit and no respite. 

What a grey nightmare it is that comes 
on, and comes on without end. 

And empty carts, with horses tied on 
behind, come gaily along the side of the 
road to meet the people, avoiding the 
mass of traffic in the centre. 

These are the carts of the buyers from 
Roslavl. 

— For a bargain. 

In the cart stands a muzhik, so as to see 
the road better than he would sitting down. 

And lashes his horse. 

Beside this horse and running at the 
sides of the cart, and behind it are a mul- 
tiplicity of legs. 

As if a spider were running quickly, 
quickly along the road. 

The fugitives get out of the way, give 



In the Forests of Mogilef 115 

up the road, — and no one even pays 
attention to the running spiders. 

The road becomes more and more clear 
of forest. 

All the land which has been cultivated, 
and the crops, are ruined. 

Along the roadway, for the whole 
length of the road, stretches a line of 
planted trees. 

As a protection from sand and from 
snow. 

Against the drifts. 

Half of these trees have now been 
rooted up. 

Truly: 

— ^As if the Tartar had gone by. 

Look, at the twenty-verst post of the 
road gleams a white cross. 

Three more crosses. 

More still. 

Still new ones, more new ones, yester- 
day's cemetery. 



ii6 The Way of the Cross 

They are white, Hke Httle Georgian 
crosses, crosses pinned to the much- 
suffering road. 

Just like Georgian orders: 

— For self-sacrifice. 

And there was expressed, together with 
affliction, much warmth and much beauty. 

"They" do the burying at nights. 

Do not bury, but: 

— Dig holes for the dead, 

as the peasants say. 

— Because it is without the requiem 
hymn. Surely such an act is not a burial. 

In the daytime, at the stopping-places, 
at the relief and medical points, they: 

— conceal their corpses, 

fearing that they may be delayed by 
formalities : 

— and remain behind! 

They carry out the corpses from the 
forest where they have spent the night 
and bring them to the road. 



In the Forests of Mog^ilef 117 



&' 



They must bury them in a place where 
the people pass by. 

— Where man coming past, will cross 
himself and pray for the soul of the de- 
parted. For you see, the dead have not 
had their due singing and prayers as at 
a proper funeral service. 

The feeHng for beauty dwelling in the 
souls of these people who, at home, dress 
themselves so wonderfully, expresses itself 
involuntarily, sub-consciously : 

— In the choice of the burial-place. 

Just as the feeling for beauty in the 
soul of the Russian people instinctively 
expressed itself in the past, in the choice 
of beautiful places for the erection of 
their monasteries. 

All the cemeteries: 

— are in beautiful places. 

Some of them, earlier in the day, have 
looked out a beautiful little hill. 

Some, a picturesque ravine, 



ii8 The Way of the Cross 

Some, a spot under a canopy of foliage. 

But certainly: 

— A beautiful spot: 

All these orphan cemeteries are pain- 
fully beautiful. 

The graves are fashioned with love. 

Everywhere carefully heaped and even- 
ly moulded mounds. 

Often a little fencing around them. 

Or the grave has been covered with 
pine branches. 

Or the wind trembles upon a lonely 
branch that has been planted in the earth. 

On the crosses have been tied em- 
broidered belts, or clean white towels 
with deeply embroidered ends have been 
swathed around them. 

There are inscriptions on the graves : 

— This province, that town district, 
this survey, that village. 

They bury them: 

— The best they can, 



In the Forests of Mogilef 119 

and go on farther, leaving behind them 
the sort of graves one only sees in dreams. 

On some graves "God's blessing." 

Ikons of the Mother of God. 

In boxes or frames. 

Other ikons than that of the Mother of 
God I did not see. 

None. 

They are ikons: 

— Of "She who intercedes." 

And pitifully She looks out, the Wo- 
man of Suffering. From the graves, upon 
the river of human affliction streaming 
past. 

On other graves are Roman Catholic 
ikons, paper pictures pasted on to wood. 

Also only the Mother of God. 

Wearing the crown, with the cleft 
heart, which the swords have pierced. 

There are Orthodox and Catholic graves 
side by side and together. 

Hundreds of thousands of beggared 



120 The Way of the Cross 

people go past, and of course no one 
touches an ikon or its setting, or an ikon 
box or the embroidered towel waving in 
the wind. 

I stop at one collection of graves, at a 
second, at a third. 

There are some which breathe horror. 

Three, five, crosses, and on all: 

— The 17th of September.' 

— The 17th of September. 

— The 17th of September. 

In one day, all. In one night a ceme- 
tery grew up. 

The majority are indicated by an 
inscription on one cross: 

— Such and such a day of August. 

On another: 

— Such and such a day of September. 

Somebody has been buried. 

Others see: 

' This Is old style. According to our calendar it would 
be the 30th of September. 



In the Forests of Mogilef 121 

— That it is a nice place. 

And lay their own dead with the others, 
side by side. 

And yet more come, and yet more. 
And the cemetery grows, stretching itself 
out along the margin of the road. 

And one reads the heart-breaking in- 
scriptions on the crosses: 

— Infant. 

— Infant. 

— Infant. 

Yes, truly, it is the province of Mogilef.^ 

Every three, every five versts, — and 
then every two versts, and every verst, 
— crosses, crosses, crosses. 

A continuous cemetery. 

And between these crosses, and amongst 
the lowering smoke of forest bonfires 
and clouds of dust come on, come on, 
without end come on grey carts and 
people, like grey visions. 

^ "Mogila " is Russian for a grave. 



122 The Way of the Cross 

With uninterrupted hooting, tinkling, 
and whistHng, the rehef cars come along, 
making their way through the dense 
crowd going in the opposite direction. 

Going for fugitives, going with fugitives. 

Every car in Roslavl is being used for 
the carting of the fugitives. 

They gather on the road the sick, the 
tired-out, horseless ones, the people going 
on foot; they pick up the children, the 
orphaned, the lonely. 

Those who are riding on worn-out, 
hardly moving horses. 

They give a push from behind when 
there's a hill to be climbed. 

Some Grodno people are going forward 
slowly and wearily on oxen. 

They try not to get separated from 
one another, but are failing. 

Grodno people. Holm people, Lublin 
people, Lomzha people. 

How many there are on the road ! 



In the Forests of Mogilef 123 

All have gone. 

Here comes a cunningly contrived 
house on wheels. 

The owner has either taken an entire 
wash-house, or has built one and put it 
on wheels, — and now a pair of horses is 
drawing it. 

Through the open door you can see 
the people sitting on a wooden form, just 
as if at home. 

Singing. 

Some Polish women are carrying, on 
wooden stands, large pictures of the 
Mother of God, all in dark ribbons, hung 
with branches of evergreen, adorned with 
withered flowers. 

They carry the ikons the whole road, 
hundreds of versts, in the hands. 

They go forwards as if seeing nothing 
in front of them. 

As if they felt no tiredness whatever. 

In a sort of unbroken ecstasy. 



124 The Way of the Cross 

As if they were going to heaven. 

And, never ceasing, loudly they sing. 

They do not complain, but give praise. 

There arises a voluminous cloud of 
white dust, that you cannot see through. 

The sort of cloud that a herd of cattle 
will raise, and of herds, only a herd of 
sheep. 

The shadows of sheep, but not sheep. 

Wasted, Skeletons. 

— What do you make of the sheep .f* 

— Bought by the Government. 

— Where do you drive them from? 

— From Lublin province itself. 

— How many? 

— There were fifteen hundred, but 
three hundred have died by the way. 

In the villages the peasant women 
stand with armfuls of white bread, which 
are baked here in saiki.^ 

^ Saiki, that is, in layers, as we might bake large rolls 
in England, a dozen or so together. 



In the Forests of Mo^filef 125 



b^ 



— One can buy something nice for the 
children's mouths. 

But the peasant women complain: 

— ^A bad trade. No one buys. A 
ruined people. 

They sell the sort which is called "nour- 
ishing," the half -white. 

Coming to a hamlet, I ask a Jewess, 
who is standing at a corner with a bread- 
tray: 

— How much is your black bread? 

— ^Four copecks a pound. It is not 
black, but it is good. 

A characteristic answer in these parts. 

Some of the fugitives are not accus- 
tomed to black bread, and complain that 
because of it : 

— The stomach gets out of order. 

Beyond Propoisk we come to what is 
probably the most sober place on earth, 
a melancholy beggared hamlet where, 
who should drink? — there live only Jews. 



12б The Way of the Cross 

Beyond Propoisk I meet a band of war 
prisoners. 

Amid the grey-blue uniforms of the 
Austrians are a few luckless Germans 
with red edging to their hats. 

They sit on a bank at the side of the 
road and look on with curiosity at the 
fugitives who for their part are not in- 
terested in them or in anything that they 
see. 

The officers seem to be all very young, 
and judging from their appearance, must 
have been students before the war ; several 
of them wear spectacles. They are seated 
in carts. 

We meet further bands of prisoners 
below Dovsk and below Kief. 

Here and near Dovsk the prisoners are 
from the German side, near Kief they 
are from the southern, the Austrian. 

— What differences! 

I don't know if it's an accident. 



In the Forests of Mogilef 127 

But the Austrian prisoners from the 
German front are fine-looking men, and 
smartly attired. 

Near Kief we meet : 

— A miserable lot. 

Boys, and to judge by the sound condi- 
tion of their boots, only lately taken for 
soldiers, and they are clad in women's 
jackets and wrapped about with worn- 
out peasant kerchiefs. 

— When one detachment of prisoners 
was stopped for some reason or other, 
and afterwards were ordered to catch up, 
on the run — they did not run like soldiers. 

Out of twenty only one held his head 
high, raised his elbows, and ran in the 
proper way. 

The remainder ran in a disorderly 
fashion, panting, and waving their arms 
wildly 

In the way that we call : 

— Coming in time from the plough. 



128 The Way of the Cross 

The first impression, perhaps an acci- 
dental one, was this: 

— That to the German front they send 
the Austrians of the first class, the picked 
troops of Austria. 

The eyes had just rested on this new 
picture, and then once more they fell upon 
the endless stream of grey carts. 

And the crosses, the crosses, along the 
length of the road. 

See, they have brought from a village 
camp a newly joinered coffin, quickly 
put together by the village carpenter. 

An open cart moves slowly along the 
middle of the road. 

The horse with suffering pain-full eyes 
steps forward slowly with uncertain 
strides. 

Just staggering. 

Will fall in a minute. 

Wavering also, as smoke in the wind, 
goes the attendant peasant beside his 



In the Forests of Mo<^ilef 129 



horse, and his eyes have that glassy look 
which seems to express nothing whatever. 

In the open cart, with folded arms, with 
pinched nose, lies the corpse. 

And the wax-like yellow face looks 
sternly toward the sky. 

Beside the corpse, just by the head, is 
a child looking forth from its rags. 

As if this was not merely a going, but: 

— ^A procession. 

And in this procession is something 
painfully touching and majestic. 

On the left-hand side of the road lies 
the carcase of a horse. 

Its purple half-eaten side reddens in 
the sun. 

At our approach several dogs with 
blood-dripping mouths leap away from 
the horse, barking. 

The way they go seems strange. As 
if they were not dogs. 

They have the appearance of wolves. 



130 The Way of the Cross 

How quickly in Nature every animal 
becomes wilder! 

Let but blood be tasted. 

See, once more come people from the 
village, one carrying a coffin lid, two 
others a coffin, and they run to overtake 
their cart. 

Another dead horse and another lot 
of dogs. 

Overhead fly black clouds of ravens, 
cawing and calling. 

What is this? 

The picture of the retreat of the "great 
army?" 

Yes, of the great agricultural army. 

And with what, and how, shall we pay 
for it? 



VII 

AT THE CROSS-ROADS 

r^OVSK is a large village. Here the 

high-road divides into two, one 

branch goes to Kief, the other to Moscow. 

Here the river of fugitives flows off in 
two directions. 

One takes the direct way to Roslavl, 
the other turns to the right for Kief. 

Which means that after Dovsk the 
fugitives will be even thicker on the 
road. 

Dovsk is a memorial to the Emperor 

Alexander II., with a great white wall 

around it, and around the wall is a camp 

of peasant carts. 

At a turn on the Kief road a great new 
131 



132 The Way of the Cross 

cemetery of new white crosses lies con- 
cealed. 

Dovsk will long live in the memory of 
the fugitives. 

Such a cemetery we have not yet met 
upon the road. 

— But what's that! say the fugitives, — 
now near Baranovitchi there is a ceme- 
tery, at Novi Puti, on the road to Slutsk. 

At Baranovitchi perished the weakest. 

Every one remembers Baranovitchi 
with terror. 

When we passed Baranovitchi it was 
still hot. 

There was a terrible thirst. 

The water of the wells had been scooped 
even to the bottom. 

They let down boys with the buckets, 
and the boys got the last of the dirty 
water and were hoisted up. 

The fugitives ate nothing but potatoes 
and cucumbers. 



At the Cross-Roads 133 

— We dug up the potatoes whilst they 
were green. 

The potatoes were not boiled, but were 
made hot in dirty water in pots put at 
the edge of bonfires. 

They ate half -raw potatoes and cucum- 
bers. 

— To-day he ate, to-morrow he was 
gone! 

The fugitives are always saying this : 

— That's why I'm safe and sound to- 
day. I ate no potatoes. 

— I was hungry, but I did not eat. 

— ^All those who ate, died. 

— I, pan,^ ran after the children all the 
time and didn't let them out of my sight. 
Just so as they shouldn't take anything 
to eat from neighbours. 

Is it possible to die here? There they 
died, — say the strongest, those who have 
gone through it all. 

^ Polish for Sir or Master. 



134 The Way of the Cross 

We pass through Rogachef, a Httle 
town overwhelmed with fugitives, with 
the dust, and with the smell of the bon- 
fires burning in the camps around. 

Rogachef is like a little white building, 
like a prison built on the high and beau- 
tiful bank of the Dnieper. 

All the meadow-land beneath is alight 
with bonfires, bonfires, bonfires, and 
flocking with fugitives. 

Here also is an exit for the great 
river. 

The railway, — and a portion of the 
people find a place here : 

Na mashinu, on the train. 

That means that ahead, the river is 
even thicker. 

— The fugitives eat us up, says Ro- 
gachef, trembling. 

In this town also you can buy nothing. 

There's no small change. 

In the chemist's shop where I go to buy 



At the Cross-Roads i35 

benzine, the public is given ''kvitki, 
money-tickets." 

— Ninety copecks change. There are 
the tickets. Sit down and wait a Httle 
whilst we deal with other customers. 

—The fugitives will eat us up, wails 
Rogachef , as the other towns and villages 
wail also. 



VIII 

BOBRUISK 

Д ND behold, we are in the province of 
'^ Minsk. 

Look, over there is where it began. 
• We go along the high-road at a foot- 
pace, as if in a town amid heavy traffic. 

They are driving cattle along the road. 

They drive the cattle here also, and 
sell them at the "points" to make soup 
for refugees. 

The hungry cows blunder among the 
carts, and put up their forefeet on to 
the backs of them in order to pull out 
hay. 

Cattle, relief cars, stray horses wan- 
dering about by themselves, peasant 
136 



Bobruisk 137 

women, road menders, police, soldiers, — 
all in one great mass. 

And dust, dust like a wall. 

Dust in which nothing is seen. 

In which you travel as in smoke, as in 
a dense fog. 

And when we drove out at last on the 
shore of the River Berezina, tortured, 
overwhelmed by all that we had seen, 
suffocating with dust, from the heat of the 
road, — I for the first time since Rogachef , 
took a full breath. 

And down below, on the lower shore, 
look where you would, there burned in 
the setting twilight and kindled redder 
and more red — bonfires. 

And a multitude of carts over the ex- 
tent of which you could not throw the 
eyes. 

Bobruisk — that is the first stopping- 
place where the oncoming crowds of peo- 
ple stumble under the burden of the Cross. 



138 The Way of the Cross 

Here for the first time on the road, the 
first of the exhausted : 

— Deprive themselves of the last thing. 

Cease to be "muzhiks." 

Give up their horses. 

And take their seats: 

— Na mashinu, on the train. 

They carry them away. 

And in their place come on like a 
continuous wall, newer and ever newer 
hordes. 

And overwhelmed Bobruisk trembles 
in terror. 

— They suffocate us. 

— What will happen to us? 

Whatever will become of these people? 



IX 



ALONG THE KIEF ROAD 

Л Д 7" HEN on the homeward road from 
Bobruisk I turned to the right 
at Dovsk by the refugees' cemetery and 
came on the Kief highway I broke away 
from the grey confused river, and it was 
as if I had wakened after a nightmare. 

A clean, free road lay ahead. 

I was going round the fugitives. 

The whole of Lublin and Lomzha 
provinces going south. 

Formerly I should have said that there 
were many. 

Now, after what I have seen below 

Bobruisk it seems as if: 

— There were none at all. 
139 



140 The Way of the Cross 

In the province of Mogilef , the potato 
country, as the farmers call it, hundreds of 
women are working in long rows hurriedly 
digging up potatoes. 

— How the price for women's labour 
has gone up — says a peasant in one of 
the villages. They're wanted on the 
big farms. The potatoes must be dug, 
quickly, hurriedly, before the refugees 
flood over the ground. 

In the Province of Cherneegof it is 
warm. 

In the shade there is a little ice on the 
pools. 

But it even bakes a little in the sun. 

The poplar trees are still beautiful 
pyramids of green. 

— The cypresses of Little Russia. 

Doves in hundreds circle over the fields 
and bathe in the transparent atmosphere, 
in the blue of the brilliant cloudless sky. 

They turn, and the whole flock of birds 



Along the Kief Road 141 

glimmers and trembles white in the sun- 
light. 

As if someone had scattered down a 
bundle of slips of paper. 

And they turn and circle and dance, 
some going from side to side, others re- 
maining at one point and hovering on their 
grey wings. 

It is quieter than ever in the village. 

It is interesting to speak with the 
village lads. 

Boys of twelve or thirteen hold them- 
selves seriously and solidly and impor- 
tantly. 

They look like muzhiks. 

They say: 

— We've got into a good position. 

They grieve for the high prices which 
have to be paid for labour, for women's 
labour. 

— ^And you've worked much yourselves? 

— Have we not? 



142 The Way of the Cross 

— ^A boy has taken the place of a man. 

The village has silently, silently, ac- 
complished a great work — it has provided 
the army and us with bread. 

At Cherneegof, when I went out for 
an evening walk along the boulevard 
adorned with antique cannon, I saw far 
away below the town the campfires on 
the meadows, on the banks of the Desna. 

And continuously, all the way to Kief, 
stretches the provinces of Lomzha and 
Lublin on the road. 

And to meet them come forward other 
fugitives. 

The same grey figures in the same grey 
carts. 

As if a uniform had been found for the 
fugitive. 

— Where are you from? 

— From the province of Volhynia. 

Northern provinces tend southward, 
the southern, for some reason, northward. 



Along the Kief Road 143 

Oh that Russian lack of system! 

In Kief I was held three days. 

And I thought: 

— I will rest my eyes till Dovsk. And 
then once more the grey river, the night- 
mare. 

But that was not my lot. 

At Brovari, Kozelets,— three versts along 
the high-road, stand mounted sentries. 

That gives to the entry to the town an 
uncommonly important aspect. 

— ^What's the matter? Are they ex- 
pecting the approach of the Governor? 

— Not at all. The fugitives. 

And ahead, at all the little towns and 
villages, we came on the sentries standing 
outside. 

— In order that the fugitives might not 
be delayed in the towns and villages, but 
pass on. 

As the corpse of a drowned man floats 
downstream. 



144 The Way of the Cross 

And on the shore stand peasants who 
push off the corpse from the land, make 
gestures, and cry out: 

— Not for us. Float farther. 

From Dovsk the main stream of the 
fugitives gushed forward, not towards 
Roslavl, but along the Kief highway. 

And at the same moment, beyond 
Gomel, there moves forward to meet them 
just such a cloud of homeless ones as 
moved over the forests of Mogilef . 

Roslavl has choked. 

They have determined to send no more 
there. 

The river has been turned southward 
at Dovsk. 

And on that road nothing has been 
prepared. 

Neither relief points where food is 
given out, nor medical help for the failing. 



X 

ALONG THE OLD ROAD 

Д T Dovsk a block took place. 

Around the statue of Alexander II. 
was an immense collection of fugitives' 
carts. 

Two thirds were moving to the south 
towards Kief. 

One third was going toward Roslavl. 

They are building barracks in Dovsk. 

Only on the eighteenth of October are 
they beginning to build barracks. 

During the week, since I passed last 
along this road, all has changed. 

In the south it is still warm, but here 
it is cold. 

The morning frosts have changed every- 
thing. 

10 145 



146 The Way of the Cross 

The forests have become clear, and it 
has become light in them. 

The birch trees stand like dark skele- 
tons. ■ 

The ground under them is a golden 
carpet of leaves. 

There is work going on on the road. 

People are working and Nature is 
working. 

Near Cherikof they are building bar- 
racks. 

On the nineteenth of October they are 
building barracks. 

At twenty-five versts from Cherikof 
they are building barracks. 

At the first post station after Roslavl. 

At the post station of Sophiskaya they 
are building barracks. 

In the province of Kaluga they are 
building barracks. 

It is the twentieth of October, and all 
the same they are only building barracks ! 



Along the Old Road 147 

Formerly, all the way from Roslavl to 
Moscow there were not crosses along the 
road. 

Now they glimmer, they stretch on. 

They have stretched to the twenty- 
eighth verst. 

New ones, only just planed. 

They have grown up here in one week. 

Whilst they were building barracks. 



XI 



HELP 



•у HE Society of "Northern-Help" 
works very energetically. 

The Municipal Alliance has given over 
a number of its points to the superin- 
tendence of Poles. 

And they have done well. 

The great majority of the fugitives 
speak Russian badly. 

They understand nothing. 

But at the relief stations people speak 
Polish with them. 

The Poles work in a business-like 
fashion. 

They know the ways of the people. 

148 



Help 149 

At the relief points where the Russians 
are working, I ask: 

— What are you cooking? 

— Borshtch.^ Shtchee.^ Soup. 

But the Poles are cooking Polish 
dishes. 

— We cook as they cook for the labour- 
ers on the large farms, explains a Polish 
official, simply. 

And the fugitives from Polish provinces 
like these relief points better. 

At the relief points they give: 

— ^According to the certificates. 

It is necessary to show the certificate 
of the head man of the village : 

— In such and such a family so many 
souls; so many grown-ups, so many 
children. 

— ^And if the certificate is wanting? 

A young Polish sister in a white ker- 

^Borshtch is a soup made from beetroot, tomato, beef, 
etc. 

' Shtchee, the well-known Russian cabbage soup. 



150 The Way of the Cross 

chief and leather jacket answers — We also 
give, even when there's no certificate. 

There are no better words on such an 
occasion, in hmnan tongue. 

At the relief points all is arranged well 
and economically. 

They wage war on the contractors. 

Disease gives birth to parasites. 

The village prepares black bread quite 
honestly. 

But near the relief points have sprung 
up contractors. 
The local: 

— Enterprising people. 

In the matter of supplying white 
bread : 

— ^For children and sick persons. 

And you will only hear one thing said, 
wherever you go : 

— Half-baked bread again. 

— I shall refuse that contractor after 
this. 



Help 151 

— ^And will another turn out to be 
better? 

And the position of the fugitives is 
hopeless. 

At the relief points they: 

— Complain. 

The flood of people is such that they 
do not succeed in making sufficient 
soup. 

They frequently have to give out soup 
that has not been properly boiled. 

And the people get ill. 

Or they give out provisions to the fugi- 
tives when the latter have no means of 
cooking them. 

Only the means of heating them at the 
bonfire-side, eating them half-raw, and 
getting ill. 

Though you give out money there is 
nowhere and nothing to buy. 

All is dear, nothing within reach. 

All along this way of affliction, in the 



152 The Way of the Cross 

villages and on the high-road, you may 
see white notices displayed : 

— Hay for fugitives. 

— Oats. 

At seven pounds a horse. 

— Wood for fugitives. 

— Milk for children. 

— Boiled water for fugitives. 

— Boiling water for fugitives. 

— Tea for fugitives. 

— Food relief point. 

— Medical point. 

— Isolation point. 

All is at the disposal of the fugitives. 

But go into the medical point and you 
will find: 

— That of medicine to stop dysentery 
there is none whatever. 

Or go into the tea shop and they will 
tell you: 

— The fugitives give the sugar to their 
children as a treat. So to prevent this 



Help 153 

we boil the sugar with the tea. It is bet- 
ter than that they should drink unboiled 
water. 

Businesslike. 

But the next establishment of that kind 
is sixty versts off. 

Once in three days a man is able to 
drink sweet tea. 
. A great help ! 

You stop at a place where a notice 
hangs out. 

— Milk for children. 

The woman doctor is fairly off her feet 
with work. 

— You give milk to children? 

— Only to children. 

— And how much milk do you receive 
per day? 

— A bucket and a half. 

You approach another milk point a 
hundred versts farther on. 

— You give out milk? 



154 The Way of the Cross 

— No. We boil semolina pudding. In 
milk half and half with water. 

— How much milk do you receive in a 
day? 

— Two buckets. 

Truly: 

— ^A drop of milk. 



XII 

HOW THE RIVER FLOWS 

TN the overwhelmed, over frightened, 
trembling little towns and villages 
— they will tell you : 

— There is no order whatever! No 
system, no plan. 

That is not so. 

That is how it seems in an immense war. 

At each separate point it is difficult to 
catch the general plan. 

And only if you make the whole jour- 
ney of "The Way of the Cross" will you 
see that here is both plan and system. 

Even an iron system. 

The general principle is that: 

— The railways being so overburdened, 
155 



156 The Way of the Cross 

the fugitives be forced to go as far as they 
can with their own horses. 

And along the . road, to lead off the 
stream in various directions and to 
diminish it. 

To Bobruisk they all go in carts. 

At Bobruisk there is the first diver- 
sion. 

A portion of the fugitives is sent off by 
rail. 

The stream is diminished. 

At Rogachef another railroad crosses 
the way, and at Rogachef there is another 
diversion. 

Another portion of the fugitives is 
given places. 

— Na mashinu. On the train. 

At Dovsk the direction of the stream 
is regulated. 

It is let loose upon Roslavl. 

Roslavl being choked, a dam is formed 
there and from Dovsk the main stream 



How the River Flows 157 

is set going towards Gomel, Cherneegof , 
and Kief. 

At Roslavl the greatest diversion takes 
place. 

Here the majority sell their horses, and 
the railway takes them off by a round- 
about route to the eastern provinces of 
Russia, avoiding Moscow. 

Those who can still go on with their 
horses beyond Roslavl turn into the 
province of Kaluga. 

Where they wander and are absorbed. 

The province of Moscow receives only 
the tiniest streams, the little drops of 
this mighty: 

— Bitter river. 



XIII 

CONCLUSION 

WE are by no means a cruel people. 
But dreadfully cruel things hap- 
pen in our country. 

We can make penal servitude into hell, 
and life into penal servitude. 

All thanks to our inability to take 
measures in time. 

The tendency to delay. 

To delay fatally. 

Always, and in everything. 

It had been decided in the face of the 
astonishing invasion of the enemy to 
leave for him a desert. 

That is the business of the war-chiefs. 

Our business, the business of the rear, 
158 



Conclusion 159 

was to organize the reception of these 
millions of people who have been deprived 
of everything in order that the enemy may 
be beaten. 

Obviously the movement of the fugi- 
tives from their villages did not begin 
yesterday. It is the ninth, the tenth 
week: 

— That they have been on the road. 

It is the fourth month since they 
started, — and only now in the province 
of Mogilef : 

— ^Are they building barracks. 

This elemental movement 

Was more than human strength could 
manage. 

To save all from disease was impossible. 

But we could have discounted this 
movement. 

Could have reckoned : 

— When and where the fugitives would 
be. 



i6o The Way of the Cross 

The distance such and such. A horse 
in a day can do so much. 

This is a "train problem," the sort that 
pupils in the first class in school work out 
and solve. 

Four months ago we could have reck- 
oned that in the month of October the 
fugitives would be in the province of 
Mogilef. 

Petrograd is too much occupied with 
politics. 

It blames society in general for this. 

— Profiting by a difiicult moment in 
affairs, Society has thrown itself into 
politics. 

Excuse me. 

In a difficult moment our society has 
shown itself in the place where Russian 
society has always shown itself in mo- 
ments difficult for the State and for the 
people. 

Public organizations have set them- 



Conclusion i6r 

selves to work for the fugitives, as in the 
past they have set themselves to work 
in time of famine or of epidemics. 

Each at his post. 

Wherever there is suffering. 

North-west, South-west, a whole wall 
of our house has fallen in, and public 
organizations have come in and softened 
the blow. 

But Petrograd has occupied itself with 
politics. 

— Is there not too much Liberalism in 
the programme of the "Progressive Blok." 
Won't the Liberals take the lead? 

And whilst Petrograd was resolving 
these great questions, the sea of fugitives 
flooded and still flooded Russia. 

At the moment when they began to 
take measures the sea had already flooded 
everywhere. 

And they began to build barracks when 
the road was starred with white crosses. 



1б2 The Way of the Cross 

The movement of the fugitives along 
the great "Way of the Cross" is one of 
affliction and calm. 

It is calmer than one could ever have 
expected. 

But there are three reasons why this 
great calamity is passing without tumult. 

The first is: 

— The work of our public organizations. 

Though it may be only half, yet they 
have fed the fugitives. 

The second: 

— The gentle autumn. 

After all, it is not so cold as it might be. 

And what is more — there has been no 
muddy season. 

How would these poor worn-out horses 
ever have pulled theraselves out of the 
mud if the heavens had poured forth? 

And the third reason : 

— Sobriety. 

Great and holy sobriety. 



Conclusion 163 

That which saves Russia in a year of 
unprecedented trial. 

A measure inspired by the very God 
Himself of the Russian land. 

No one can give drink to these unhappy 
people. How they would have drunk, 
if only to get rid of their grief, to get rid 
of the remembrance of what they had lost ; 
farms, wives, children. 

That's how it would have been. 

But thanks to sobriety this great un- 
happy people, afflictedly, calmly, with 
the calm of martyrs, makes its grievous: 

— Way of the Cross. 



The following equivalents of Russian terms may be 
helpful : 

A copeck: the Russian farthing. 
A rouble: before the war worth two shillings and a penny, 

now worth about one shilling and seven pence. 
A pood: thirty-six English pounds. 
A verst: about two thirds of a mile. 
An arshin: 28 inches. 
Izba: a peasant's cottage. 

[Editor.] 



News from 
Somewhere 

By 
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Author of "The Romance of a Pro-Consul," etc. 

12°, Frontispiece 

" Many things seen, heard, and thought 
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New York London 




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The Bowmen 

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The Bowmen is the legend of the 
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